A Dignitary in the Land? Literary Representations of the American Rabbi

The Haskalah of the late eighteenth century, it is often observed, dealt a major blow to many traditional Ashkenazic institutions, including the rabbinate. Formerly extolled by their communities in nearly God-like superlatives—such as “Chief shepherd, a dignitary in the land … Prince among princes in Torah and wisdom”—rabbis became the object of trenchant criticism during this period. The maskilim, formerly denizens of the yeshivot, cast special aspersion on rabbis and their assertion of the authority of Jewish law, charging that the rabbinic insistence on stringencies and legal minutiae was the source of all that was wrong with Diaspora Jewish life. Much of the critique of the rabbinate targeted the culture of yeshiva learning that supported it; the maskilim promoted the study of philosophy, science, Hebrew literature, and the scientific study of Judaism. Often, this literary and philosophical assault on the authority, role, and Talmud-centeredness of the rabbinate took the form of a critique of arranged marriages and the unequal status of women in Jewish law.

Download Full-text

Trends in the Study of Medieval Hebrew Literature

AJS Review ◽

10.1017/s0364009400000441 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 125-141

Author(s):

Dan Pagis

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

North Africa ◽

Hebrew Literature ◽

Hebrew Poetry ◽

The Bible ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽

Medieval Hebrew

The vast body of premodern Hebrew literature is usually termed “medieval“—a somewhat misleading term, partly based on the assumption that in most countries the Jewish Middle Ages lasted until the Emancipation in the eighteenth century. However, as is well known, this literature was by no means monolithic. It comprised such disparate schools and styles as portions of the liturgy dating back to late Roman times, the Palestinian and Eastern piyyut (liturgical poetry) of the Byzantine and Moslem periods, the famed Hebrew-Spanish school and its ramifications or parallel schools in Provence, North Africa, Turkey, and the Yemen, other important centers like Germany and France, and an entire millennium of Hebrew poetry in Italy whose later stages coincided with, and were influenced by, the Renaissance and the Baroque. Israel Davidson's monumental bibliography, entitled in English Thesaurus of Hebrew Mediaeval Poetry, actually spans more than a millennium and a half, or, as its Hebrew title states, “from the canonization of the Bible to the beginning of the period of Enlightenment” (in the late eighteenth century). Alternative terms to “medieval” seem scarcely clearer; “postbiblical” tacitly and misleadingly excludes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while “premodern” includes the Bible.

Download Full-text

From Eulogy to Announcement: Death Notices in the Jewish Press since the Late Eighteenth Century

OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying ◽

10.2190/a6t5-yhgk-7lpa-c4cp ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 25 (2) ◽

pp. 133-168 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Luis Roniger

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Quantitative Research ◽

Jewish Life ◽

Jewish Communities ◽

Qualitative And Quantitative ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth

Qualitative and quantitative research into the Jewish press in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, French, German, and English is used to trace major steps in the transformation of styles of public notice of death in modern Jewish communities, and discuss its significance in both reflecting and shaping important aspects of contemporary Jewish life.

Download Full-text

Introduction

Anna and Tranquillo ◽

10.12987/yale/9780300219043.003.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Kenneth Stow

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

French Revolution ◽

Canon Law ◽

Jewish Life ◽

Civil Law ◽

Legal Rights ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

The U.S

This introductory chapter explores the transformation in Jewish life that failed to occur in late eighteenth-century Rome. The French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution had established that Jews were citizens with full and equal legal rights. But in Rome, the capital of the then Papal State, no such proclamation occurred. Although Rome's Jews possessed rights in civil law, the discrimination determined by canon law was great. Roman Jews were forced to live in the ghetto decreed by Pope Paul IV in 1555, as part of a vigorous conversionary drive. People were taken to an institution known as the House of Converts, where they were held for periods of time, and most eventually converted. However, some did not, most notably Anna del Monte, who not only remained a Jew but also left a diary recounting her thirteen days in the Catecumeni, as Rome's Jews called the place.

Download Full-text

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Portraits, and the Physiognomy of Music History

Journal of the American Musicological Society ◽

10.1525/jams.2013.66.2.337 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 66 (2) ◽

pp. 337-396 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Annette Richards

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

Music History ◽

Literary Representations ◽

Meeting Point ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach ◽

Point Of Departure

Abstract Taking as its point of departure C. P. E. Bach's extensive, and newly reconstructed, portrait collection, this essay explores the ways in which history in the late eighteenth century was conceived at the meeting point between the portrait collector, the physiognomist, and the anecdotist. Exploring the network of ideas and cultural practices by focusing on the collecting of individual countenances and their visual and literary representations, this article argues that anecdote, annotation, physiognomical analysis, and the visual discipline of portraiture were fundamental to the late eighteenth-century conception of music history. Further, it argues that C. P. E. Bach's activity as a portrait collector may be understood as a significant music-historiographical project in its own right, one which played an important role in the work of contemporary, and later, music historians.

Download Full-text

l'Ecorce grossiere, l'ame aristocrate : literary representations of Cajuns in Francophone Louisiana, nineteenth century to present

10.32469/10355/48688 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Scott Gossett

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Native American ◽

Spanish American ◽

Literary Representations ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

The People ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Anglo American ◽

Diverse Cultures ◽

People Today

Cajuns have traditionally been defined as originating from French Acadian refugees who arrived in Louisiana from present-day Nova Scotia beginning in the late eighteenth century. However many of the people today who identify with the Cajun ethnicity are not descendants of those Acadian settlers. Moreover, this and other modern definitions of 'Cajun' have been solidified fairly recently in the twentieth century and have been formed through a dialogue with Anglo-American stereotypes. These stereotypes restrict the identity and ignore the major influences from a plethora of diverse cultures: French, Spanish, American, Irish, German, African, and Native American. This study provides a Francophone alternative to the English stereotypes that more accurately portrays the complexities of Cajun identity and provides an alternative portrayal with which to enter a dialogue.

Download Full-text