Science In Medieval Jewish Cultures

Provides the first comprehensive overview by world-renowned experts of what we know today of medieval Jews' engagement with the sciences.

Provides the first comprehensive overview by world-renowned experts of what we know today of medieval Jews' engagement with the sciences.

An hommage to Gad Freudenthal, this volume offers studies on the history of science and on the role of science in medieval and early-modern Jewish cultures, investigating various aspects of processes of knowledge transfer and scientific cross-cultural contacts,

In his academic career, that by now spans six decades, Daniel J. Lasker distinguished himself by the wide range of his scholarly interests. In the field of Jewish theology and philosophy he contributed significantly to the study of Rabbinic as well as Karaite authors. In the field of Jewish polemics his studies explore Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew texts, analyzing them in the context of their Christian and Muslim backgrounds. His contributions refer to a wide variety of authors who lived from the 9th century to the 18th century and beyond, in the Muslim East, in Muslin and Christian parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and in west and east Europe. This Festschrift for Daniel J. Lasker consists of four parts. The first highlights his academic career and scholarly achievements. In the three other parts, colleagues and students of Daniel J. Lasker offer their own findings and insights in topics strongly connected to his studies, namely, intersections of Jewish theology and Biblical exegesis with the Islamic and Christian cultures, as well as Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, this wide-scoped and rich volume offers significant contributions to a variety of topics in Jewish Studies.

The origins of Judaism's regional 'subcultures' are poorly understood, as are Jewish identities other than 'Ashkenaz' and 'Sepharad'. Through case studies and close textual readings, this volume illuminates the role of geopolitical boundaries, cross-cultural influences, and migration in the medieval formation of Jewish regional identities.

A study on the scientific dimension of Jewish intellectual history in the early modern world

The main focus of this book is the study of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s (1089-1167) scientific thought within the historical and cultural context of his times. His scientific contribution may be understood as the very embodiment of ‘the rise of medieval Hebrew science’, a process in which Jewish scholars gradually adopted the holy tongue as a vehicle to express secular and scientific ideas. The first part provides a comprehensive picture of Ibn Ezra’s scientific corpus. The second part studies his linguistic strategy. The third and fourth parts study Ibn Ezra’s introductions to his scientific treatises and the fifth part is devoted to studying four ‘encounters’ with Claudius Ptolemy, the main scientific character featuring in Ibn Ezra’s literary work.

Rejecting the idea that Jews have done well in science because of uniquely Jewish traits, Jewish brains, and Jewish habits of mind, this book approaches the Jewish affinity for science through the geographic and cultural circumstances of Jews who were compelled to settle in new worlds in the early twentieth century.