Stefan C. Reif - Böcker

This collection of original contributions by an international group of experts summarizes recent developments in Genizah research. Stefan Reif's overview of a century of work on the famous Taylor-Schechter Collection of Hebrew manuscripts at Cambridge University Library is followed by Menahem Kister's textual interpretations of the Ben Sira fragments. Michael Klein uncovers targumic contexts and renderings, while Menahem Kahana demonstrates how Genizah texts permit the reconstruction of early midrashim. Neil Danzig's analysis sheds light on ninth-century prayers and homilies, and Joseph Yahalom chronicles Judah Halevi's last years. Haggai Ben-Shammai assesses S. D. Goitein's contribution to Jewish historiography and touches on Jewish theology, and Paul Fenton reveals that Muslims and Jews often co-operated professionally and sometimes enjoyed close social contact. Mordechai Friedman concentrates on child brides, family violence and Jewish marriage documents, while Joel Kraemer describes letters between women and their relatives. There are extensive indexes as well as 22 plates.

This study traces the origins of Hebrew prayer among the Jews and explains how the first volumes of formal Jewish liturgy emerged. It describes in a lively and thought-provoking manner the leading rites and personalities of medieval Jewish worship and explains how the various interpretations of Judaism in the modern world have responded in their own way to the challenge of dialogue with the divine. Existing theories are challenged, and new theories offered, and the result will make liturgical research accessible to modern readers.

Much of the primary research summarized here relates to Cambridge Genizah manuscripts, a thousand-year-old source that testifies to liturgical (as well, of course, as non-liturgical) developments that greatly predate other source material. When the research is concerned with pre-Genizah history, the Genizah evidence is also relevant since the historian of religious ideas must ultimately decide how to date, characterize, and conceptualize its contents and how to explain where they vary significantly from what became, or is regarded (rightly or wrongly) as having become, the standard rabbinic liturgy sanctioned by the Iraqi Jewish authorities from the ninth to the eleventh century.

Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.

Given the recent interest in the emotions presupposed in early religious literature, it has been thought useful to examine in this volume how the Jews and early Christians expressed their feelings within the prayers recorded in some of their literature. Specialists in their fields from academic institutions around the world have analysed important texts relating to this overall theme and to what is revealed with regard to such diverse topics as relations with God, exegesis, education, prophecy, linguistic expression, feminism, happiness, grief, cult, suicide, non-Jews, Hellenism, Qumran and Jerusalem. The texts discussed are in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and are important for a scientific understanding of how Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity developed their approaches to worship, to the construction of their theology and to the feelings that lay behind their religious ideas and practices. The articles contribute significantly to an historical understanding of how Jews maintained their earlier traditions but also came to terms with the ideology of the dominant Hellenistic culture that surrounded them.

In his articles Stefan Reif deas with Jewish biblical exegesis and the close analysis of the evolution of Jewish prayer texts. Some fourteen of these that appeared in various collective volumes are here made more easily available, together with a major new study of Numbers 13, an introduction and extensive indexes. Reif attempts to establish whether there is any linguistic, literary and exegetical value in the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible for the modern scientific approach to such texts and whether such an approach itself is always free of theological bias. He demonstrates how Jewish liturgical texts may illuminate religious teachings about wisdom, history, peace, forgiveness, and divine metaphors. Also clarified in these essays are notions of David, Greek and Hebrew, divine metaphors, and the liturgical use of the Hebrew Bible.

Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.

The discovery of Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira in the Cairo Genizah has shaped and transformed the interpretation of the book. It is argued here that a proper appreciation of the manuscripts themselves is also essential for understanding this ancient work.Since their discovery 120 years ago and subsequent identification of leaves, attention has been directed to the interpretation of the ancient book, the Wisdom of Ben Sira. Serious consideration should also be given to the Hebrew manuscripts themselves and their particular contributions to understanding the language and transmission of the book. The surprising appearance of a work that was preserved by Christians and denounced by some Rabbis raises questions over the preservation of the book. At the same time, diversity among the manuscripts means that exegesis has to be built on an appreciation of the individual manuscripts. The contributors examine the manuscripts in this light, examining their discovery, the codicology and reception of the manuscripts within rabbinic and medieval Judaism, and the light they throw on the Hebrew language and poetic techniques.The book is essential reading for those working on Ben Sira, the reception of the deuterocanon, and Medieval Hebrew manuscripts.

In his articles Stefan Reif’s articles have dealt with Jewish biblical exegesis and the close analysis of the evolution of Jewish prayer texts. Some fourteen of these that appeared in various collective volumes are here made more easily available, together with a major new study of Numbers 13, an introduction and extensive indexes. Reif attempts to establish whether there is any linguistic, literary and exegetical value in the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible for the modern scientific approach to such texts and whether such an approach itself is always free of theological bias. He demonstrates how Jewish liturgical texts may illuminate religious teachings about wisdom, history, peace, forgiveness, and divine metaphors. Also clarified in these essays are notions of David, Greek and Hebrew, divine metaphors, and the liturgical use of the Hebrew Bible.

This volume contains essays by some of the leading scholars in the study of the Jewish religious ideas in the Second Temple period, that led up to the development of early forms of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Close attention is paid to the cosmological ideas to be found in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible and to the manner in which the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek reflected the creativity with which Judaism engaged Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos and the creation. The concepts of heaven and divine power, human mortality, the forces of nature, combat myths, and the philosophy of wisdom, as they occur in 2 Maccabees, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon and Tobit, are carefully analysed and compared with Greek and Roman world-views. There are also critical examinations of Dead Sea scroll texts, early Jewish prayers and Hebrew liturgical poetry and how they these adopt, adapt and alter earlier ideas. The editors have included appreciations of two major figures who played important roles in the study of the Second Temple period and in the history and development of the ISDCL, namely, Otto Kaiser and Alexander Di Lella, who died recently and are greatly missed by those in the field.

Given Leopold Zunz’s difficult German style and the tight conciseness of his presentation, it is hardly surprising that no English translation of his Die Ritus (1859) has been published. The Hebrew edition of 2016 does not aim to place this pioneering work in the context of Jewish liturgical history, sometimes opts for a paraphrase, rather than a literal translation, and does not always make it easy to distinguish Zunz from later scholarship. There are undoubtedly English-speaking scholars in current academia who are unacquainted with German and Modern Hebrew but would benefit from reading this classic study. This volume therefore links Die Ritus with Zunz’s other scholarly works by way of a brief introduction, provides a faithful translation, without the result reading more like German than English. It reproduces Zunz’s footnotes in his own highly abbreviated form but offers as an appendix to the introductory essay a bibliographical list that explains references that may not be obvious even to a learned reader. Readers of English will now be able to reach their own conclusions about the stature of Zunz, about his contributions to the study of Jewish liturgy, and, indeed, about any shortcomings that there may have been in his scholarly, theological and political tendencies.

This set of varied and stimulating papers, by an international group of younger as well as senior scholars, examines the manner in which peoplehood was understood by the Jewish communities of the Second Temple period and by the religious traditions that emerged from those communities and later flourished in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The Hebrew and Greek terms for "people" and "nation" and the name "Israel" are closely analyzed, especially in forays into wisdom literature, Jewish apologetic and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and their uses are related to geographical, political and theological developments, as well as statehood, authority and rulership in the Persian world, Hasmonean times and Ptolemaic Egypt. Especially interesting are the carefully argued and documented suggestions about how Jewish peoplehood expressed itself with regard to charitable behavior, pagan deities, and marital regulations. Those interested in the history of cultural and theological tensions will be intrigued by the studies centered on how the opponents of Jews behaved towards "the people of God", how Hellenistic Jewish culture located the Jews on the Roman rather than on the Greek side, and how early Christian discourse saw the mission among the peoples and interpreted earlier sources accordingly. The idea of the Jewish "way of life" is seen to have influenced the writer of the longer Greek version of Esther and works of fiction are shown to have had important historical data within them. Modern social theory also has its say here in a careful consideration of Cognitive theory of ethnicity and the dynamic of ethnic boundary-making.

The introduction offers some thoughts on each of the four areas covered by the essays and draws some broad conclusions. Studies of the history of manuscripts and of their acquisition demonstrate their impact on research into Jewish studies and on modern Judaism’s understanding of itself. What emerges from liturgical studies here included is how important it is not only to analyze texts but also to identify overall historical, geographical and cultural developments. Prayer may have been used as an educational tool and, in turn, influenced educational ideas and agendas. The liturgical themes that occur and recur over the centuries (and especially in the talmudic and medieval periods) reflect the ideological and theological notions that lie behind prayer texts and the variant forms that they take. Some common prayers are seen to include concepts of time, views of creation, attitudes to non-Jews and definitions of Jewish peoplehood. The appreciations of some leading modern scholars of Jewish studies set them in their educational, historical and religious contexts and indicate what they had in common as experts in scientific Jewish studies as well as what remained individual about their lives, research publications and achievements.

Jacob Mann (1888–1940), a major figure in the fields of medieval Jewish history and rabbinic literature, was an early user of the Cairo Genizah materials to improve our understanding of these fields. This volume, based on papers delivered at a conference at St. John’s College, Cambridge, assesses his scholarly contributions in the light of more recent developments in these areas. Yosef Ofer, Moshe Lavee, and Gila Wachman deal with Mann’s work on the triennial Torah-reading cycle and hafṭarot, synagogue homilies, and a previously unknown midrashic work from the land of Israel. Ruth Langer and Stefan Reif appraise Mann’s liturgical studies. Adiel Breuer, Sacha Stern, and Jennifer Grayson evaluate Mann’s work on halakhic literature, the rabbinic calendar, and the history of the Babylonian yeshivot. Menahem Ben-Sasson reviews Mann’s article on messianic movements during the Crusades. Miriam Frankel and Yoram Erder deal with Mann’s contributions to Karaite studies. Richard Sarason provides an updated biography of Mann and bibliography of his scholarly writings. Together, they portray Mann as a scholar who was captivated by the riches of the Cairo Genizah and devoted his academic career to their exploration and publication.

Given Leopold Zunz’s difficult German style and the tight conciseness of his presentation, it is hardly surprising that no English translation of his Die Ritus (1859) has been published. The Hebrew edition of 2016 does not aim to place this pioneering work in the context of Jewish liturgical history, sometimes opts for a paraphrase, rather than a literal translation, and does not always make it easy to distinguish Zunz from later scholarship. There are undoubtedly English-speaking scholars in current academia who are unacquainted with German and Modern Hebrew but would benefit from reading this classic study. This volume therefore links Die Ritus with Zunz’s other scholarly works by way of a brief introduction, provides a faithful translation, without the result reading more like German than English. It reproduces Zunz’s footnotes in his own highly abbreviated form but offers as an appendix to the introductory essay a bibliographical list that explains references that may not be obvious even to a learned reader. Readers of English will now be able to reach their own conclusions about the stature of Zunz, about his contributions to the study of Jewish liturgy, and, indeed, about any shortcomings that there may have been in his scholarly, theological and political tendencies.