Download or read book Poverty Charity and the Image of the Poor in Rabbinic Texts from the Land of Israel written by Yael Wilfand and published by . This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the rabbinic literature from the land of Israel the poor are depicted not as passive recipients of gifts and support, but as independent agents who are responsible for their own behaviour. Communal care for the needy was expected to go beyond their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter; the physical safety of the poor and the value of their time as well as their dignity and self-worth were also included in the scope of charity. In this monograph, Yael Wilfand offers a comprehensive and contextual analysis of major rabbinic texts on poverty and charity composed during the first five centuries of the Common Era in the land of Israel, principally the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim. She shows that, for the rabbis, the poor were not necessarily considered outsiders; indeed, some students and rabbis in Palestine may have personally experienced poverty. Wilfand claims that such socio-economic diversity contributed to the thinking of these rabbis, who rarely saw poverty as a result of transgression (in contrast to the Babylonian Talmud). This book presents a number of contrasting viewpoints held by Palestinian rabbis over such questions as: Must communal administrators ensure applicants' eligibility for alms? Should the newly indigent from wealthy families receive exceptional levels of support? Might neighbouring gentiles qualify for economic assistance from Jewish communal sources? By examining Palestinian rabbinic sources within the contexts both of the hegemonic Greco-Roman (later, Christian) milieu and of the biblical heritage, this volume offers an absorbing account of some ancient approaches to timeless social challenges.
Download or read book Poverty Charity and the Image of the Poor in Rabbinic Texts from the Land of Israel written by Yael Wilfand Ben Shalom and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wealth Poverty and Charity in Jewish Antiquity written by Gregg Gardner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- The wealth of the early rabbis -- Harvest allocations for the poor -- Charity laws -- Giving mammon (wealth) -- Pay for the giver -- Charity as an investment -- Poverty relief and the anxiety of wealth -- Conclusion.
Download or read book Charity in Rabbinic Judaism written by Alyssa M. Gray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-29 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying the many ideas about how giving charity atones for sin and other rewards in late antique rabbinic literature, this volume contains many, varied, and even conflicting ideas, as the multiplicity must be recognized and allowed expression. Topics include the significance of the rabbis’ use of the biblical word "tzedaqah" as charity, the coexistence of the idea that God is the ultimate recipient of tzedaqah along with rabbinic ambivalence about that idea, redemptive almsgiving, and the reward for charity of retention or increase in wealth. Rabbinic literature’s preference for "teshuvah" (repentance) over tzedeqah to atone for sin is also closely examined. Throughout, close attention is paid to chronological differences in these ideas, and to differences between the rabbinic compilations of the land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud. The book extensively analyzes the various ways the Babylonian Talmud especially tends to put limits on the divine element in charity while privileging its human, this-worldly dimensions. This tendency also characterizes the Babylonian Talmud’s treatment of other topics. The book briefly surveys some post-Talmudic developments. As the study fills a gap in existing scholarship on charity and the rabbis, it is an invaluable resource for scholars and clergy interested in charity within comparative religion, history, and religion.
Download or read book The Patrons and Their Poor written by Debra Kaplan and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pregnant mother, a teacher who had fallen ill, a thirty-year-old homeless thief, refugees from war-torn communities, orphans, widows, the mentally disabled and domestic servants. What this diverse group of individuals—mentioned in a wide range of manuscript and print sources in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish—had in common was their appeal to early modern Jewish communities for aid. Poor relief administrators, confronted with multiple requests and a finite communal budget, were forced to decide who would receive support and how much, and who would not. Then as now, observes Debra Kaplan, public charity tells us about both donors and recipients, revealing the values, perceptions, roles in society, and the dynamics of power that existed between those who gave and those who received. In The Patrons and Their Poor, Kaplan offers the first extensive analysis of Jewish poor relief in early modern German cities and towns, focusing on three major urban Ashkenazic Jewish communities from the Western part of the Holy Roman Empire: Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, Frankfurt am Main, and Worms. She demonstrates how Jewish charitable institutions became increasingly formalized as Jewish authorities faced a growing number of people seeking aid amid limited resources. Kaplan explores the intersections between various sectors of the population, from wealthy patrons to the homeless and stateless poor, providing an intimate portrait of the early modern Ashkenazic community.
Download or read book Studies in Rabbinic Narratives Volume 1 written by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore new theoretical tools and lines of analysis of rabbinic stories Rabbinic literature includes hundreds of stories and brief narrative traditions. These narrative traditions often take the form of biographical anecdotes that recount a deed or event in the life of a rabbi. Modern scholars consider these narratives as didactic fictions—stories used to teach lessons, promote rabbinic values, and grapple with the tensions and conflicts of rabbinic life. Using methods drawn from literary and cultural theory, including feminist, structuralist, Marxist, and psychoanalytic methods, contributors analyze narratives from the Babylonian Talmud, midrash, Mishnah, and other rabbinic compilations to shed light on their meanings, functions, and narrative art. Contributors include Julia Watts Belser, Beth Berkowitz, Dov Kahane, Jane L. Kanarek, Tzvi Novick, James Adam Redfield, Jay Rovner, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Zvi Septimus, Dov Weiss, and Barry Scott Wimpfheimer.
Download or read book Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity written by Chaya T Halberstam and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-02 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity is the first book to examine what early Jewish courtroom narratives can tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice. Drawing from affect theory and feminist legal thought, Chaya T. Halberstam offers original readings of some of the most famous trials in the ancient Jewish tradition.
Download or read book Collected Essays written by Haym Soloveitchik and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-04 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing his major contribution to medieval Jewish intellectual history, Haym Soloveitchik focuses here on the radical German Pietists and their main literary work Sefer Ḥasidim, and on the writings and personality of the Provençal commentator Ravad of Posquières. In both areas he challenges reigning views and sets a new agenda for research.
Download or read book Goy written by Adi Ophir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goy: Israel's Others and the Birth of the Gentile traces the development of the term and category of the goy from the Bible to rabbinic literature. Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi show that the category of the goy was born much later than scholars assume; in fact not before the first century CE. They explain that the abstract concept of the gentile first appeared in Paul's Letters. However, it was only in rabbinic literature that this category became the center of a stable and long standing structure that involved God, the Halakha, history, and salvation. The authors narrate this development through chronological analyses of the various biblical and post biblical texts (including the Dead Sea scrolls, the New Testament and early patristics, the Mishnah, and rabbinic Midrash) and synchronic analyses of several discursive structures. Looking at some of the goy's instantiations in contemporary Jewish culture in Israel and the United States, the study concludes with an examination of the extraordinary resilience of the Jew/goy division and asks how would Judaism look like without the gentile as its binary contrast.
Download or read book Going West written by Reuven Kiperwasser and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book by Reuven Kiperwasser examines the social, cultural, and religious aspects of third- to sixth-century narratives involving rabbinic figures migrating between Babylonia and Palestine. Kiperwasser draws on migration and mobility studies, comparative literature, humor and satire studies, as well as social history to reveal how border-crossing rabbis were seen as exporting features of their previous eastern context into their new western homes and vice versa. Through their writing, rabbinic authors articulated the nature and legitimacy of their own scholastic practices, knowledge, and authority in relationship to their internal others.
Download or read book Jerusalem and Other Holy Places as Foci of Multireligious and Ideological Confrontation written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerusalem and Other Holy Places as Foci of Multireligious and Ideological Confrontation demonstrates the variety in the study of holy places, as well as the flexibility of geographic and historical aspects of holiness.
Download or read book An Early History of Compassion written by Françoise Mirguet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Françoise Mirguet traces the appropriation and reinterpretation of pity by Greek-speaking Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. Pity and compassion, in this corpus, comprised a hybrid of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman constructions; depending on the texts, they were a spontaneous feeling, a practice, a virtue, or a precept of the Mosaic law. The requirement to feel for those who suffer sustained the identity of the Jewish minority, both creating continuity with its traditions and emulating dominant discourses. Mirguet's book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity for its sensitivity to the role of feelings and imagination in the shaping of identity. An important contribution to the history of emotions, it explores the role of the emotional imagination within the context of Roman imperialism. It also contributes to understanding how compassion has come to be so highly valued in Western cultures.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law written by Pamela Barmash and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2019 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major innovations have occurred in the study of biblical law in recent decades. The legal material of the Pentateuch has received new interest with detailed studies of specific biblical passages. The comparison of biblical practice to ancient Near Eastern customs has received a new impetus with the concentration on texts from actual ancient legal transactions. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state of the art analysis of the major questions, principles, and texts pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among scholars working in biblical law.
Download or read book Expressions of Sceptical Topoi in Late Antique Judaism written by Reuven Kiperwasser and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series Studies and Texts in Scepticism contains monographs, translations, and collected essays exploring scepticism in its dual manifestation as a purely philosophical tradition and as a set of sceptical strategies, concepts, and attitudes in the cultural field - especially in religions, perhaps most notably in Judaism. In such cultural contexts scepticism manifests as a critical attitude towards different dimensions and systems of secular or revealed knowledge and towards religious and political authorities. It is not merely an intellectual or theoretical worldview, but a critical form of life that expresses itself in such diverse phenomena as religion, literature, and society. Further book series of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies are Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and Religion and the Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advances Studies.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Human Life in the Bible written by Martin J. Buss and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Dynamics of Human Life in the Bible: Receptivity and Power, Martin J. Buss describes the dynamics of human life that are encouraged in the Bible and how biblical guidance compares with other religious traditions. The dynamics include both receptivity (“from” another) and power (“for” or “over” another), often in combination (“with” another). For example, love joins receptive cognition of worth with energetic support. Receptivity, the only way to deal with fundamental values, seeks material and religious benefits and is the human side of revelation and salvation. Public acknowledgement strengthens divine influence. Furthermore, receptivity accepts challenges. These include individual and social growth and semi-identification with others, which has societal rather than concrete individual consequences. Power is crucial in legal remedies and penalties. Life with others is important in practical “wisdom” and in Christian “mutual love.” Buss finds that biblical directives parallel those of non-Christian religious traditions. This situation is in line with biblical views of general revelation and developments in history.
Download or read book Wages of Cross Bearing and Debt of Sin written by Nathan Eubank and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In comparison to Mark and Luke, the First Gospel contains a striking preponderance of economic language in passages dealing with sin, righteousness, and divine recompense. For instance, sin is described as a debt, and righteous deeds are said to earn wages with God or treasure in heaven. This study analyzes Matthew’s economic language against the backdrop of other early Jewish and Christian literature and examines its import for the narrative as a whole. Careful attention to this neglected aspect of Matthew’s theology demonstrates that some of the Gospel’s central claims about atonement, Jesus’ death and resurrection, and divine recompense emerge from this conceptual matrix. By tracing the narrative development of the economic motif, the author explains how Jesus saves his people from their sins and comes to be enthroned as Son of Man, sheds new light on numerous exegetical puzzles, and clarifies the relationship of ethical rigorism and divine generosity.
Download or read book Exploring Mishnah s World s written by Simcha Fishbane and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-07 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a new conceptual and methodological framework the social scientific study of Mishnah, as well as a series of case studies that apply social science perspectives to the analysis of Mishnah's evidence. The framework is one that takes full account of the historical and literary-historical issues that impinge upon the use of Mishnah for any scholarly purposes beyond philological study, including social scientific approaches to the materials. Based on the framework, each chapter undertakes, with appropriate methodological caveats, an avenue of inquiry open to the social scientist that brings to bear social scientific questions and modes of inquiry to Mishnaic evidence.
