Prohibitions and Prescriptions about Family Life in the Work of I. Teneromo

The article is devoted to the life and works of I. Teneromo, a participant of the Tolstoyan movement, correspondent of L.N. Tolstoy, the author of memories, journalist and playwright. It deals with works which reflected his understanding of the «family question» close to Tolstoy's views; emphasizes the autobiographical basis of a number of his plays, as well as stories about conversations with Tolstoy. His plays and stories do not pretend to be of special artistic value, they are analyzed taking into account the edifying tasks and moral lessons important for the author, whose views was formed under the influence of the ideas of Tolstoy, Russian social life, and the assimilation processes characteristic of Russian Jewry in the transitional era of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Commandment or Good Deed? The Concept of Mitzvah in the Traditions of East European Jews

The term mitzvah is very significant in the traditional culture of the East European Jews. It meant a commandment when it was carried out by a professional for money, and a good deed when the same work was performed by an “amateur” gratis. The not received fee was credited to “amateur’s” heavenly account and accumulated there. The idea of a list of sins and mitzvot continuously maintained in heaven gave rise to the idea of heavenly bookkeeping, a kind of personal account with income (mitzvot) and expenses (sins) in a monetary form.

The Laws of the Temple and the Proper Sleep in Biblical and Rabbinic traditions

This article deals with the idea that the bed should be placed north to south and not from west to east formulated in B. Berakhot 5b. As the later tradition says, this rule stays actual during the middle ages and till these days. According to the commentators this rule is based on the idea, that the Shekhinah lays from west to east, so this direction became sacred. There are three reasons to avoid this position during the sleep. All of them are connected to the ritual impurity. The first is nocturnal emission, which can happen to a man or a woman and which make that person impure. The second reason is the connection of sleep to death, which is the «father of fathers of impurities». The third is the vulnerability of the human being from the side of the different kind of night demonic creatures, who can kill the people (and make them ritually impure). All the ideas have deep biblical roots, but were combined only in rabbinical period when the prescription to put the bed form north to south first appeared. The problem is, that the practice could be very much older than the rabbinic tradition. This the rule formulated in Talmud can serve as a good example of adaptation of popular beliefs toward the official religion. From the other side this example shows that inside the monotheistic tradition there always was a place for ideas rooted in archaic societies: here we can see the clearly formulated idea, that by the manipulation sleeping space one can influence prosperity.

Russian Peasants’ Beliefs on “Krovosmeshenie” in the Late 19th Century (on Materials of Fund of Vladimir N. Tenishev)

The article makes an overview of the materials collected by the Bureau of V.N. Tenishev in different provinces of European Russia regarding the ban on various situations of sexual relations between blood relatives and in-laws that existed at the Russian peasants in the late 19th century. An attempt is made to divide the whole set of prohibited sexual relations, united in the minds of peasants by the category of “krovosmeshenie”, i.e. incest, into two parts, based on the concept of two types of incest, presented by the French anthropologist F. Héritier, who developed the structural approach. Noting the variability in the views of Russian peasants, the author formulates the general trends. The first – “krovosmeshenie”, i.e. incest, was condemned, in the people's environment it was considered a sin, but not a crime. The second – the most serious sin were sexual relations in the presence of spiritual kinship, as well as within a small family (brother and sister, father and daughter) and “snokhachestvo” (sexual relations with daughter-in-law or sister-in-law, and other similar situations). Third – the anticipated consequences of incest: disgrace, destruction of the family, the inability to bear children, illness, unhappy fate, the heavy death.

Marriage Prohibitions in the Hasmoneans’ Dynastic Politics

The article describes the marriage prohibitions in the Hasmonean state’s dynastic policy (II–I centuries BC). The Jewish rulers had a very strict approach in choosing a partner. The main criteria were ritual purity and good origin (by the Judaic norms), as well as belonging to the Jewish elite. During the last rulers of an independent state of the Hasmoneans (Aristobul II and Hyrkanus II) there was a transition to consanguineous marriages. One of the reasons is the influence of the Hellenistic tradition, in which such marriages are normal. In Judaism there are prohibitions on incest, but the Hasmoneans were able to meet the standards of Judaism (marriage with a cousin). Such a policy is an excellent example of the specificity of the Hasmonean dynasty: to follow the norms of Judaism, while being in the context of the common Hellenistic paradigm.

“All is White”: The Prohibitions of the Doctrine and Practice of the Mari Sect Kugu Sorta

The research article scrutinizes fundamentals of the Kugu Sorta’s doctrine. The Mari sect Kugu Sorta appeared in the 1870s in Yaransky Uyezd of the Vyatka Governorate. It affected the religious situation in the region greatly. Its doctrine was based on the sturdy system of bans and prescriptions that were meant to establish clear identity’s boundary lines in the polyethnic area. The article reviews the causes of those bans and prescriptions, ways it was manifested and determines the place of the bans and prescriptions in the sect’s religious system. As a primary source, the article considers the “Petition to the Highness”, forwarded to obtain a permit to stick to the doctrine, elaborated by members of the sect in 1787. The petition has a form of Kugu Sorta’s presentation and contains its basic provisions.

Jewish Minority in the Context of Polish Law

Prohibitions and regulations in Poland, later Poland-Lithuania played a special rule-making and regulatory role, regulating all possible aspects of coexistence of Jews and non-Jews, including situations of conflict – this is the domain of secular and church legislation, decrees. lawsuits. Jews in Polish lands existed under conditions of a rather complex legal system, they became subject to various legal tendencies, as shown in the article by various examples, but they always respected the laws of the country and tried to follow both the prohibitions and the prescriptions contained therein.

Contemporary Money Magic: Taboos and Prescriptions (on Latvian Material)

In the article, the magic of money in contemporary Latvian urban practices is analyzed. The money magic aims at money making. Field work showed that these practices are popular today among different generations in Latvia. Respondents know well taboos and prescriptions about money and use them in order to make money or to prevent loosing them. The collected material represents that Latvian narratives and practices are very similar to other regions of post-Soviet space. The interviews in Russian and Latvian taken in the frames of field research were supplemented by texts of traditional folklore, gathered on the territory of Latvia in 19th–20th centuries. Examples of Internet folklore also illustrated contemporary situation of money magic in Latvia.

Etiology of Prohibitions and Regulations in the Mirror of Folk Legends and Beliefs

The author's task is to formulate some general statements on how prohibitions and regulations addressed to or attributed to the “other” (ethnic, religious) tradition are formed in the Slavic folk culture, and what cultural stereotypes affect the form and content of the prescriptive texts originating and existing in a multi-confessional cultural environment and in the cultural borderlands. We are interested in prohibitions and regulations in the context of folk legends that explain their appearance, and in connection with beliefs that play the role of a kind of fixator of certain prescriptive norms. In the etiological texts (legends, fairy tales) containing the interpretation of the ban / prescription, in addition to the motivation of the described ban / prescription (why something is prohibited or allowed), there may be a reference to the precedent, i.e. the etiology itself (what exactly was the reason, the impetus, the primary source of the ban / prescription).