Menasseh ben Israel

Menasseh ben Israel
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 313
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300224108
ISBN-13 : 0300224109
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Synopsis Menasseh ben Israel by : Steven M. Nadler

An illuminating biography of the great Amsterdam rabbi and celebrated popularizer of Judaism in the seventeenth century Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was among the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was one of the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community that quickly earned renown worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Born in Lisbon, Menasseh and his family were forcibly converted to Catholicism but suspected of insincerity in their new faith. To avoid the horrors of the Inquisition, they fled first to southwestern France, and then to Amsterdam, where they finally settled. Menasseh played an important role during the formative decades of one of the most vital Jewish communities of early modern Europe, and was influential through his extraordinary work as a printer and his efforts on behalf of the readmission of Jews to England. In this lively biography, Steven Nadler provides a fresh perspective on this seminal figure.

Prémices Philosophiques

Prémices Philosophiques
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Total Pages : 264
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9004081178
ISBN-13 : 9789004081178
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis Prémices Philosophiques by : Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem

The Hope of Israel

The Hope of Israel
Author :
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Total Pages : 208
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781909821217
ISBN-13 : 1909821217
Rating : 4/5 (17 Downloads)

Synopsis The Hope of Israel by : Menasseh Ben-Israel

When The Hope of Israel was translated into English in 1652, its argument from Scripture that messianic redemption would not come to the Jewish people until they were scattered in all the corners of the Earth aroused great interest and played an instrumental part in the discussions in the Commonwealth under Cromwell which eventually led to the readmission of the Jews in 1656. This edition of that English text includes an introduction and notes which place the work in the intellectual context of its time.

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 408
Release :
ISBN-10 : STANFORD:36105041221867
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Synopsis A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel by : Cecil Roth

Judaism for Christians

Judaism for Christians
Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages : 277
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781498572972
ISBN-13 : 1498572979
Rating : 4/5 (72 Downloads)

Synopsis Judaism for Christians by : Sina Rauschenbach

Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was one of the best-known rabbis in early modern Europe. In the course of his life he became an important Jewish interlocutor for Christian scholars interested in Hebrew studies and negotiated with Oliver Cromwell and Parliament the return of the Jews to England. Born to a family of former conversos, Menasseh was versed in Christian theology and astutely used this knowledge to adapt the content and tone of his publications to the interests and needs of his Christian readers. Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) is the first extensive study to systematically focus on key titles in Menasseh’s Latin works and discuss the success and failure of his strategies of translation in the larger context of early modern Christian Hebraism. Rauschenbach also examines the mistranslation of his books by Christian scholars, who were not yet ready to share Menasseh’s vision of an Abrahamic theology and of a republic of letters whose members were not divided by denomination. Ultimately, Menasseh’s plans to use Jewish knowledge as an entrée billet for Jews into Christian societies proved to be illusory, as Christian readers understood him instead as a Jewish witness for “Christian truths.” Menasseh’s Jewish coreligionists disapproved of what they perceived to be his dangerous involvement in Christian debates, providing non-Jews with delicate information. It was only a century after his death that Menasseh became a model for new generations of Jewish scholars.

Rembrandt's Jews

Rembrandt's Jews
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 279
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226360614
ISBN-13 : 022636061X
Rating : 4/5 (14 Downloads)

Synopsis Rembrandt's Jews by : Steven Nadler

There is a popular and romantic myth about Rembrandt and the Jewish people. One of history's greatest artists, we are often told, had a special affinity for Judaism. With so many of Rembrandt's works devoted to stories of the Hebrew Bible, and with his apparent penchant for Jewish themes and the sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faces, it is no wonder that the myth has endured for centuries. Rembrandt's Jews puts this myth to the test as it examines both the legend and the reality of Rembrandt's relationship to Jews and Judaism. In his elegantly written and engrossing tour of Jewish Amsterdam—which begins in 1653 as workers are repairing Rembrandt's Portuguese-Jewish neighbor's house and completely disrupting the artist's life and livelihood—Steven Nadler tells us the stories of the artist's portraits of Jewish sitters, of his mundane and often contentious dealings with his neighbors in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and of the tolerant setting that city provided for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe. As Nadler shows, Rembrandt was only one of a number of prominent seventeenth-century Dutch painters and draftsmen who found inspiration in Jewish subjects. Looking at other artists, such as the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael and Emmanuel de Witte, a celebrated painter of architectural interiors, Nadler is able to build a deep and complex account of the remarkable relationship between Dutch and Jewish cultures in the period, evidenced in the dispassionate, even ordinary ways in which Jews and their religion are represented—far from the demonization and grotesque caricatures, the iconography of the outsider, so often found in depictions of Jews during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Through his close look at paintings, etchings, and drawings; in his discussion of intellectual and social life during the Dutch Golden Age; and even through his own travels in pursuit of his subject, Nadler takes the reader through Jewish Amsterdam then and now—a trip that, under ever-threatening Dutch skies, is full of colorful and eccentric personalities, fiery debates, and magnificent art.

Reframing Rembrandt

Reframing Rembrandt
Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Total Pages : 287
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780520227415
ISBN-13 : 0520227417
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Synopsis Reframing Rembrandt by : Michael Zell

"This book embeds Rembrandt's art in the pluralistic religious context of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, arguing for the restoration of this historical dimension to contemporary discussions of the artists. By incorporating this perspective, Zell confirms and revises one of the most forceful myths attached to Rembrandt's art and life: his presumed attraction and sensitivity to the Jews of early modern Amsterdam."--BOOK JACKET.

Amsterdam's People of the Book

Amsterdam's People of the Book
Author :
Publisher : Hebrew Union College Press
Total Pages : 331
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780878201891
ISBN-13 : 0878201890
Rating : 4/5 (91 Downloads)

Synopsis Amsterdam's People of the Book by : Benjamin E. Fisher

The Spanish and Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam cultivated a remarkable culture centered on the Bible. School children studied the Bible systematically, while rabbinic literature was pushed to levels reached by few students; adults met in confraternities to study Scripture; and families listened to Scripture-based sermons in synagogue, and to help pass the long, cold winter nights of northwest Europe. The community's rabbis produced creative, and often unprecedented scholarship on the Jewish Bible as well as the New Testament. Amsterdam's People of the Book shows that this unique, Bible-centered culture resulted from the confluence of the Jewish community's Catholic and converso past with the Protestant world in which they came to live. Studying Amsterdam's Jews offers an early window into the prioritization of the Bible over rabbinic literature -- a trend that continues through modernity in western Europe. It allows us to see how Amsterdam's rabbis experimented with new historical methods for understanding the Bible, and how they grappled with doubts about the authority and truth of the Bible that were growing in the world around them. Amsterdam's People of the Book allows us to appreciate how Benedict Spinoza's ideas were in fact shaped by the approaches to reading the Bible in the community where he was born, raised, and educated. After all, as Spinoza himself remarked, before becoming Amsterdam's most famous heretic and one of Europe's leading philosophers and biblical critics, he was "steeped in the common beliefs about the Bible from childhood on."

The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel

The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 299
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781009089135
ISBN-13 : 1009089137
Rating : 4/5 (35 Downloads)

Synopsis The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel by : Andrew Tobolowsky

The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel is the first study to treat the history of claims to an Israelite identity as an ongoing historical phenomenon from biblical times to the present. By treating the Hebrew Bible's accounts of Israel as one of many efforts to construct an Israelite history, rather than source material for later legends, Andrew Tobolowsky brings a long-term comparative approach to biblical and nonbiblical “Israelite” histories. In the process, he sheds new light on how the structure of the twelve tribes tradition enables the creation of so many different visions of Israel, and generates new questions: How can we explain the enduring power of the myth of the twelve tribes of Israel? How does “becoming Israel” work, why has it proven so popular, and how did it change over time? Finally, what can the changing shape of Israel itself reveal about those who claimed it?