David B. Ruderman – författare

The history of a single book sheds light on the beginnings of modern Jewish thoughtIn 1797, in what is now the Czech Republic, Pinḥas Hurwitz published Book of the Covenant. Nominally an extended commentary on a sixteenth-century kabbalist text, Pinḥas’s publication was in fact a compendium of scientific knowledge and a manual of moral behavior. Its popularity stemmed from its ability to present the scientific advances and moral cosmopolitanism of its day in the context of Jewish legal and mystical tradition. Describing the latest developments in science and philosophy in the sacred language of Hebrew, Hurwitz argued that an intellectual understanding of the cosmos was not at odds with but actually key to achieving spiritual attainment. In A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era, David Ruderman offers a literary and intellectual history of Hurwitz’s book and its legacy. Hurwitz not only wrote the book, but also was instrumental in selling it, and his success ultimately led to the publication of more than forty editions in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Ruderman provides a multidimensional picture of the book and the intellectual tradition it helped to inaugurate. Complicating accounts that consider modern Jewish thought to be the product of a radical break from a religious, mystical past, Ruderman shows how, instead, a complex continuity shaped Jewish society’s confrontation with modernity.

A compelling history of the early modern Jewish experienceEarly Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before.Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists.In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience.

Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel 1553-c.1624) composed his Hebrew work Gei Hizzayon (A Valley of Vision) in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. This striking text, so different from the other writings of the prolific physician, natural philosopher, and kabbalist, is first an autobiographical account of the vicissitudes of the author''s years as a Jewish loan ­banker. It is also a description of a heavenly journey he is taken on by the soul of his recently deceased father, who visits his son while he is imprisoned in Mantua for debt. Finally, it is a series of theological and moral discussions based on the insights of Judaism, particularly the kabbalah as understood by Yagel and his Italian contemporaries.A Valley of Vision is unique in Hebrew literature in its integration of traditional Jewish materials with contemporary literary and iconographic innovations. It is also a fascinating window into the social and cultural world of Italian Jewry at the end of the sixteenth century and its effect on the entire late Renaissance period.David B. Ruderman''s is the first translation of this important work into any Western language. The book will be of great interest to both the specialist and the general reader of Jewish and late Renaissance history, thought, and literature.