Miriam Bodian - Böcker

"An engaging introduction to the tortuous plight faced by exiled conversos in Amsterdam and their methods of response. Choicet; In this skillful and well-argued book Miriam Bodian explores the communal history of the Portuguese Jews . . . who settled in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century." —Sixteenth Century JournaDrawing on family and communal records, diaries, memoirs, and literary works, among other sources, Miriam Bodian tells the moving story of how Portuguese "new Christian" immigrants in 17th-century Amsterdam fashioned a close and cohesive community that recreated a Jewish religious identity while retaining its Iberian heritage.

Miriam Bodian's study of crypto-Jewish martyrdom in Iberian lands depicts a new type of martyr that emerged in the late 16th century—a defiant, educated judaizing martyr who engaged in disputes with inquisitors. By examining closely the Inquisition dossiers of four men who were tried in the Iberian peninsula or Spanish America and who developed judaizing theologies that drew from currents of Reformation thinking that emphasized the authority of Scripture and the religious autonomy of individual interpreters of Scripture, Miriam Bodian reveals unexpected connections between Reformation thought and historic crypto-Judaism. The complex personalities of the martyrs, acting in response to psychic and situational pressures, emerge vividly from this absorbing book.

In Conversion, Miriam Bodian considers the now-universalized term "conversion" in a Jewish context as broadly as possible, as an act of socioreligious boundary crossing. It charts how, across the long arc of Jewish history from biblical times to the present, patterns of boundary crossing have developed and shifted, whether of Gentiles entering Jewish life or of Jews exiting from it. It analyzes the biblical passages that have informed Jewish thinking about what is required to become a Jew before turning to the early rabbis’ institution of a ritualized process of conversion. It then considers the protean ways in which Gentiles have become Jews and Jews have joined other religious communities from medieval to modern times. A further section is devoted to the complexities of conversion in the contemporary Jewish world, where conversions are not necessarily recognized across denominations, where substantial intermarriage has eroded the traditional boundaries between Jew and Gentile, and where the modern state of Israel plays a role that reaches beyond its borders in determining who is a Jew.

In Conversion, Miriam Bodian considers the now-universalized term "conversion" in a Jewish context as broadly as possible, as an act of socioreligious boundary crossing. It charts how, across the long arc of Jewish history from biblical times to the present, patterns of boundary crossing have developed and shifted, whether of Gentiles entering Jewish life or of Jews exiting from it. It analyzes the biblical passages that have informed Jewish thinking about what is required to become a Jew before turning to the early rabbis’ institution of a ritualized process of conversion. It then considers the protean ways in which Gentiles have become Jews and Jews have joined other religious communities from medieval to modern times. A further section is devoted to the complexities of conversion in the contemporary Jewish world, where conversions are not necessarily recognized across denominations, where substantial intermarriage has eroded the traditional boundaries between Jew and Gentile, and where the modern state of Israel plays a role that reaches beyond its borders in determining who is a Jew.

This book brings together the work of scholars who are exploring the entanglement of traditions and identities among the three major religio-ethnic groups in early modern Spain.