Transfer of Credit, Mercantile Mobility, and Language among Jewish Merchants in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Central and East Central Europe

Author(s):  
Avinoam J. Stillman

Abstract This article explores the printed editions of Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha‘arei Orah in the broader context of kabbalistic knowledge in early modern East-Central Europe. Following its first Italian editions, the book was reprinted several times. The Kraków 1600 edition with commentary by Matityah Delacrut presented Sha‘arei Orah as a kabbalistic lexicon and study aid. The Offenbach 1715 edition included additional notes that linked Sha‘arei Orah to the Safedian Kabbalah of Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria. Finally, the several editions published in Żółkiew exemplify the diversification of Kabbalah in the contentious religious climate of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe. Each printing reflects a discrete historical context, yet Sha‘arei Orah was consistently seen as an introductory guide to Kabbalah. Threading together these unique moments reveals one trajectory of the history of Kabbalah, as printing brought esoteric texts to new generations of readers with new concerns and agendas.


Author(s):  
Jacek Wieclawski

This article discusses the problems of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe. It formulates the general conclusions and examines the specific case of the Visegrad Group as the most advanced example of this cooperation. The article identifies the integrating and disintegrating tendencies that have so far accompanied the sub-regional dialogue in East-Central Europe. Yet it claims that the disintegrating impulses prevail over the integrating impulses. EastCentral Europe remains diversified and it has not developed a single platform of the sub-regional dialogue. The common experience of the communist period gives way to the growing difference of the sub-regional interests and the ability of the East-Central European members to coordinate their positions in the European Union is limited. The Visegrad Group is no exception in this regard despite its rich agenda of social and cultural contacts. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict confirms a deep divergence of interests among the Visegrad states that seems more important for the future of the Visegrad cooperation than the recent attempts to mark the Visegrad unity in the European refugee crisis. Finally, the Ukrainian crisis and the strengthening of the NATO’s “Eastern flank” may contribute to some new ideas of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe, to include the Polish-Baltic rapprochement or the closer dialogue between Poland and Romania. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v10i1.251  


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