scholarly journals The “Killer Wife” (Qatlanit) in Jewish Law: A Survey of Sources

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Adler Goodfriend
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Mortal Danger

This article traces the development of Jewish law regarding the qatlanit or “killer-wife,” a woman who was twice widowed. The Jewish law examines the dilemma whether she should be allowed to marry again because of the risk that she poses a mortal danger to men whom she marries. Fear of marrying a woman twice-widowed plays a role in the story of Tamar, but Genesis 38 makes it clear that it is God who is responsible for the deaths of Er and Onan, and not the innocent widow. The Talmud prohibits the marriage of a twice-widowed woman, and attributes the demise of her husbands not to any intention on her part, but rather her “source” (sexual organs) or her “mazal” (fate as determined by astrology). Later responsa generally reflect a more lenient attitude towards the remarriage of the qatlanit in response to the tumult and tragedy of medieval Jewish history, as well as the growing influence of rationalism in Jewish thought. Modern rabbis, because of their openness to scientific thought and concern for the loneliness of old age, show a marked leniency towards the remarriage of a twice-widowed woman.

Holiness in Jewish Thought

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Life

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

SageBook: Toward a cross-generational social network for the Jewish sages’ prosopography

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-695
Author(s):  
Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet ◽  
Gila Prebor
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Argumentation Analysis

Abstract In this research we devised and implemented a semi-automatic approach for building a SageBook–a cross-generational social network of the Jewish sages from the Rabbinic literature. The proposed methodology is based on a shallow argumentation analysis leading to detection of lexical–syntactic patterns which represent different relationships between the sages in the text. The method was successfully applied and evaluated on the corpus of the Mishna, the first written work of the Rabbinic Literature which provides the foundation to the Jewish law development. The constructed prosopographical database and the network generated from its data enable a large-scale quantitative analysis of the sages and their related data, and therefore might contribute to the research of the Talmudic literature and evolution of the Jewish thought throughout the two last millennia.

Polish History through the Eyes of Three Jewish Popular Historians

1998 ◽  
pp. 312-318
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Large Volume ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a comparison of Howard Sachar's book The Course of Modern Jewish History, which was first published in 1958, with two other general works on Jewish history. One is a large volume entitled A History of the Jewish People, edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, which was first published in Hebrew in 1969. The other is Robert M. Seltzer's Jewish People, Jewish Thought, which is more limited in size and scope and intended for a broad audience. The chapter considers only topics relating to Polish history, not those concerned with exclusively internal Jewish problems or the history of other nations. Nor will there be any general assessment of Sachar's book. Although Ben-Sasson's and Seltzer's works cover Jewish history from ancient to modern times, the story of the Jews in Poland is a relatively recent chapter in this history: it dates only from the creation of the Polish state in the tenth century. Both authors mention the early period of Polish history only briefly, beginning their real narratives of Polish Jewry with the detailed analysis of privileges granted to Jews by Polish kings in the thirteenth century.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and the Mystification of Maimonidean Rationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-86
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Jewish Intellectual

This chapter points out how modern Jewish thinkers looked back and engaged a foundational Jewish canon of scriptural and rabbinic texts when they staked out their own novel ground and advanced Jewish thought in the twentieth century. It mentions the intellectual and jurisprudential legacy of Maimonides as a major part of the development of Jewish law and thought. It also focuses on Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, who embodies modern Jewish authenticity in the twentieth century. The chapter discusses Jewish intellectual, literary, and activist currents that intersected Rabbi Kook. It explores Rabbi Kook's passionate spiritual and political advocacy of Zionism, and his rabbinic leadership of pre-state Jaffa. It describes how Rabbi Kook was constantly driven by an irrepressible urge to disclose his most intimate reflections, no matter what the consequences might be.

scholarly journals Beyond the Scope of Philosophy and Kabbalah

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Tzahi Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

The turn of the thirteenth century is a formative period for the historiography of medieval Jewish thought. These years saw the dissemination of the Hebrew translations of the Maimonidean corpus, alongside the simultaneous appearance of the first Kabbalistic treatises, in the same geographical regions. This concurrent appearance led scholars to examine Jewish theological discourse mainly via two juxtaposed categories: “Philosophy” and “Kabbalah”. In this paper, I will return to that formative moment in order to demonstrate that exploring Jewish history of ideas beyond the scope of these categories could be very advantageous in improving our understanding of both categories and the Jewish theological inner-dynamics in this period as a whole. I will draw attention to a contemporary theological attitude, which is neither Kabbalistic nor philosophical, which I will define as a medieval form of Jewish binitarianism. My argument in this paper will be composed of two parts—first, outlining the nature of this medieval Jewish theological trend, and second, showing how a precise definition of this belief within its context alters crucial notions and understandings in the common scholarly historiography of medieval Jewish thought.

Palestinian Talmud/Yerushalmi

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leib Moscovitz
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Source Of Information

The Palestinian Talmud (“Talmud Yerushalmi” in Hebrew; henceforth PT), is a rabbinic compendium of Palestinian provenance from Late Antiquity on the Mishnah. PT is far more than a commentary since it contains independent discussions of Jewish law and thought, stories about rabbis and other types of narrative, and biblical exegesis of various sorts. PT serves as an important tool for scholarly analysis of the more familiar and widely studied Babylonian Talmud (BT); the traditions preserved in PT are often less subject to various types of editorial reworking than their BT counterparts and, as such, can be very helpful for studying the development of their BT parallels. Likewise, PT serves as an important source of information about the Palestinian rabbinic world in Late Antiquity. In traditional settings, PT played a certain role in the interpretation of BT and in the development of Jewish law during the medieval period, in addition to serving as an object of study in its own right, although its study was largely neglected due to textual and interpretative difficulties, which problematized its study both for academic scholars and traditional students. This article accordingly begins by surveying the principal tools for the study of PT and continues with a survey of text-critical and exegetical issues, followed by a survey of various redactional aspects of PT. (Most of this material is in Hebrew, and much of it is highly technical, so it may prove unsuitable for beginners.) The focus here is of course on PT per se, although responsible scholarship on PT necessitates analysis of the work in a number of broader contexts, such as the study of Jewish history in Late Antiquity and rabbinic literature in general; hence, the student of PT is advised to consult surveys of these topics as well.

Jewish Law of Warranties: Some Comparative Aspects

1975 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-130
Author(s):  
Irwin H. Haut
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Great Part ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Interested Reader ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Case Basis

Aspects of Jewish Sales Law which may be referred to as the law of warranties are the subject of this article. Only the sale of personalty is dealt with and comparison is made with parallel developments in American Sales Law.The temptation to engage in extensive discussion of the sources of Jewish Law and of its nature and developments has been resisted and only some brief preliminary remarks concerning Jewish Law have been included but the interested reader is referred elsewhere for further discussion of these matters.Unlike the Common law, which developed on a case to case basis, Jewish law developed along several lines. Jewish law developed in part on a case to case basis as exemplified by Talmudic discussions and expositions; in part in an enormous and still growingResponsaliterature; and in the decisions of Rabbinical Courts throughout Jewish history. On the other hand, the development of Jewish law depended in great part on various Codes, the most important for our purposes being those of Maimonides, Asherides and Karo.

The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics

2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Commercial Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
First Offers

The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics explores how Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people relate to the economic sphere of life in modern society as well as in the past. The volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles—the interaction of Judaism and economics encompasses many different dimensions and much of this interaction can be explored through the way in which Jewish law accommodates and even enhances commercial practice today and in past societies. The book first offers a brief overview of the nature and development of Jewish law as a legal system, then presents articles from a variety of angles and areas of expertise. The book offers contributions on economic theory in the Bible and in the Talmud; on the interaction between Jewish law, ethics, modern society, and public policy; then presents illuminating explorations of Judaism throughout economic history and the ways in which economics has influenced Jewish history.

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