Masterpieces Of Hebew Literature

The classic anthology of major works, from the Apocrypha to the 18th century

Masterpieces of Hebrew Literature is a true masterpiece of its own--one of the few collections in which readers can find important works of Jewish tradition and culture by such authors as Rashi, Maimonides, Judah Halevi, and Joseph Caro, all in one place. Curt Leviant includes literature that spans many genres, from fiction and poetry to legal, ethical, and midrashic works; from responsa and Biblical commentary to histories and letters. His brief introductions place the works and their authors in historical perspective.

Selection of Hebrew literary masterpieces written between the 8th and 18th centuries.

Left to their fate, neglected by the authorities, and forming almost the whole of the urban population, the Jews of Lithuania, in the full glare of the eighteenth century, were in all essentials an autonomous community with Jewish national and theocratic features....Lithuanina, in fine, was the promised land of Rabbinism, in which everything favored the development of a national Jewish centre. -from ""Humanism in Russia" Originally published in French in 1909 as the author's doctorate thesis at the University of Paris, this celebratory but scholarly work examines the rebirth of Hebrew as a literary language and offers an accessible survey of the literature it has produced, by a "grievous spectacle of poets and writers who are constantly expressing their anxiety lest it disappear within them." Pan-European in scope and capturing all the romance and conflict of the works of a people newly finding their collective voice, this is a hopeful and humanistic book, one that Jewish scholars and literature fans alike will find useful and readable. NAHUM SLOUSCHZ (1872-1966) was a Zionist activist and philosopher.