Amishah Umshe Torah

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The notion that rituals, like natural languages, are governed by implicit, rigorous rules led scholars in the last century, harking back to the early Indian grammarian Patañjali, to speak of a "grammar", or "syntax", of ritual, particularly sacrificial ritual. Despite insightful examples of ritual complexes that follow hierarchical rules akin to syntactic structures in natural languages, and ambitious attempts to imagine a Universal Grammar of sacrificial ritual, no single, comprehensive "grammar" of any ritual system has yet been composed. This book offers the first such "grammar." Centering on Σ—the idealized sacrificial system represented in the Priestly laws in the Pentateuch—it demonstrates that a ritual system is describable in terms of a set of concise, unconsciously internalized, generative rules, analogous to the grammar of a natural language. Despite far-reaching diachronic developments, reflected in Second Temple and rabbinic literature, the ancient Israelite sacrificial system retained a highly unchangeable "grammar," which is abstracted and analysed in a formulaic manner. The limits of the analogy to linguistics are stressed: rather than categories borrowed from linguistics, such as syntax and morphology, the operative categories of Σ are abstracted inductively from the ritual texts: zoemics—the study of the classes of animals used in ritual sacrifice; jugation-the rules governing the joining of animal and non-animal materials; hierarchics-the tiered structuring of sacrificial sequences; and praxemics—the analysis of the physical activity comprising sacrificial procedures. Finally, the problem of meaning in non-linguistic ritual systems is addressed.

A thirteenth-century text purporting to represent a debate between a Jew and a Christian begins with the latter's exposition of the virgin birth, something the Jew finds incomprehensible at the most basic level, for reasons other than theological: "Speak to me in French and explain your words!" he says. "Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin!" While the Christian and the Jew of the debate both inhabit the so-called Latin Middle Ages, the Jew is no more comfortable with Latin than the Christian would be with Hebrew. Communication between the two is possible only through the vernacular. In Vernacular Voices, Kirsten Fudeman looks at the roles played by language, and especially medieval French and Hebrew, in shaping identity and culture. How did language affect the way Jews thought, how they interacted with one another and with Christians, and who they perceived themselves to be? What circumstances and forces led to the rise of a medieval Jewish tradition in French? Who were the writers, and why did they sometimes choose to write in the vernacular rather than Hebrew? How and in what terms did Jews define their relationship to the larger French-speaking community? Drawing on a variety of texts written in medieval French and Hebrew, including biblical glosses, medical and culinary recipes, incantations, prayers for the dead, wedding songs, and letters, Fudeman challenges readers to open their ears to the everyday voices of medieval French-speaking Jews and to consider French elements in Hebrew manuscripts not as a marginal phenomenon but as reflections of a vibrant and full vernacular existence. Applying analytical strategies from linguistics, literature, and history, she demonstrates that language played a central role in the formation, expression, and maintenance of medieval Jewish identity and that it brought Christians and Jews together even as it set them apart.

V knjigi so zbrani prispevki z dveh mednarodnih konferenc, od katerih je eno organiziral ZRC SAZU septembra 1998 v Ljubljani. Zbornik je razdeljen na pet delov. V prvem z naslovom »Jeruzalem znotraj krščanske in občeslovanske tradicije« sodelujejo O. Belova, I. Kazovskaya, J. Krašovec, S. Tolstaya in E. Vereshchagin. V drugem »Jeruzalem in svet južnih Slovanov in Judov« so avtorji M. Frejdenberg, E. Holz, V. Nartnik, M. Nosić, D. Poniž, F. Premk, J. Rotar in Z. Šmitek. Avtorji prispevkov v tretjem delu »Jeruzalem in svet vzhodnih Slovanov« so A. Arkhipov, L. Calvi, G. Giraudo, P. Gonneau, L. Fialkova, Ja. Iluk, V. Khazan, V. Levin, Yu. Leving, V. Moskovich, J. Raba in A. Rogachevsky. V četrtem delu »Jeruzalem in svet zahodnih Slovanov« je en sam prispevek avtorja V. Bria in enako je v petem delu »Jeruzalem in sosedje Slovanov«, kjer je objavljen prispevek B. Levaia. Zbornik je večjezičen; dvanajst člankov je pisanih v angleščini, enajst v ruščini, dva v slovenščini in po eden v francoščini in ukrajinščini.

Encompassing the work of historians, art-historians, and literary scholars, these essays explore how interrelated processes of communal inclusion and exclusion - articulated through institutions, discourses, performances, and artefacts - shaped the construction of individual and collective identities in medieval Europe.

Ancient peoples regarded names as indicative of character and destiny. The Jews were no exception. This is a critical study of ancient exegesis of the title `Israel' and the meanings attributed to it among Jews down to Talmudic times, along with some early Christian materials. C. T. R. Hayward explores ancient etymologies of `Israel', and the utilization of these very varied explanations of the name in sustained works of exegesis like Jubilees; the writings of Ben Sira, Philo, and Josephus; and selected Rabbinic texts including Aramaic Targumim. He also examines translational works like the Septuagint, to illuminate those writings' sense of what it meant to be a Jew.