Download or read book Jews and the Wine Trade in Medieval Europe written by Haym Soloveitchik and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-03 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Jews were at the centre of commercial activity in medieval Europe, a talmudic ban on any wine touched by a Gentile prevented them from engaging in the lucrative wine trade. Wine was consumed in vast quantities in the Middle Ages, and the banks of the Rhineland hosted some of the finest vineyards in northern Europe. German Jews were, until the thirteenth century, a merchant class. How could they abstain from trading in one of the region’s major commodities? In time, they ruled that it was permissible to accept wine in payment of debt, but forbade trading in it, and they maintained that ban throughout the Middle Ages. Further study in the twelfth century, however, led Talmudists to discover that Jews were only forbidden to profit from trading in Gentile wine if they dealt with idolaters, but that trade with Christians and Muslims was permitted. Nevertheless, the German community refused to take advantage of this clear licence. Using Jewish and Gentile sources, this study probes the sources of this powerful taboo. In describing the complex ways in which deeply held cultural values affect Jews’ engagement in the economy of the surrounding society, this book also illustrates the law of unintended consequences—how the ban on Gentile wine led both to a major Jewish contribution to German viticulture and to the involvement of Jews in moneylending, with all its tragic consequences.
Download or read book The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000 1500 written by Susan Rose and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wine has held its place for centuries at the heart of social and cultural life in western Europe. This book explains how and why this came about, providing a thematic history of wine and the wine trade in Europe in the middle ages from c.1000 to c.1500.Wine was one of the earliest commodities to be traded across the whole of western Europe. Because of its commercial importance, more is probably known about the way viticulture was undertaken and wine itself was made, than the farming methods used with most other agricultural products at the time. Susan Rose addresses questions such as:Where were vines grown at this time? How was wine made and stored? Were there acknowledged distinctions in quality? How did traders operate? What were the social customs associated with wine drinking? What view was taken by moralists? How important was its association with Christian ritual? Did Islamic prohibitions on alcohol affect the wine trade? What other functions did wine have?
Download or read book Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe written by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society’s attitude toward individuals identified as criminals—by others or themselves—can serve as a window into that society’s mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society’s attitudes toward them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion written by Rachel M. McCleary and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a one-of-kind volume bringing together leading scholars in the economics of religion for the first time. The treatment of topics is interdisciplinary, comparative, as well as global in nature. Scholars apply the economics of religion approach to contemporary issues such as immigrants in the United States and ask historical questions such as why did Judaism as a religion promote investment in education? The economics of religion applies economic concepts (for example, supply and demand) and models of the market to the study of religion. Advocates of the economics of religion approach look at ways in which the religion market influences individual choices as well as institutional development. For example, economists would argue that when a large denomination declines, the religion is not supplying the right kind of religious good that appeals to the faithful. Like firms, religions compete and supply goods. The economics of religion approach using rational choice theory, assumes that all human beings, regardless of their cultural context, their socio-economic situation, act rationally to further his/her ends. The wide-ranging topics show the depth and breadth of the approach to the study of religion.
Download or read book Cultural Exchange written by Joseph Shatzmiller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, Cultural Exchange meticulously combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged artistic and material culture. Joseph Shatzmiller focuses on communities in northern Europe, Iberia, and other Mediterranean societies where Jews and Christians coexisted for centuries, and he synthesizes the most current research to describe the daily encounters that enabled both societies to appreciate common artistic values. Detailing the transmission of cultural sensibilities in the medieval money market and the world of Jewish money lenders, this book examines objects pawned by peasants and humble citizens, sacred relics exchanged by the clergy as security for loans, and aesthetic goods given up by the Christian well-to-do who required financial assistance. The work also explores frescoes and decorations likely painted by non-Jews in medieval and early modern Jewish homes located in Germanic lands, and the ways in which Jews hired Christian artists and craftsmen to decorate Hebrew prayer books and create liturgical objects. Conversely, Christians frequently hired Jewish craftsmen to produce liturgical objects used in Christian churches. With rich archival documentation, Cultural Exchange sheds light on the social and economic history of the creation of Jewish and Christian art, and expands the general understanding of cultural exchange in brand-new ways.
Download or read book Eating at God s Table written by Jody Myers and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The practice and meaning of kosher Orthodox foodways in sustaining a vibrant and diverse community. How do contemporary American Orthodox Jews use food to create boundaries, distinguishing and dividing groups from each other and from non-Orthodox communities? How does food symbolize beliefs, sustain and grow communities, and represent commitment to God? Eating at God’s Table explores answers and examples from ten years of ethnographic research in the Orthodox enclave in the west Los Angeles Pico-Robertson neighborhood. Author Jody Myers explores the food-centeredness of Orthodox Jewish religious practice and the evolutionary development of today’s demanding kosher laws. Opening with four scenarios based on real observations, Myers illustrates how many Orthodox residents’ religious beliefs and practices around food are integrated into, even inseparable from, their daily activities. While the shared commitment to the kosher diet creates an overall sense of community, Orthodox sub-affiliations in the neighborhood use foodways to construct smaller, intimate communities, and individuals use food to fashion personal identities within the larger group. This rich exploration of kosher Orthodox foodways and their meanings demonstrates the inadequacy of limited or simple definitions of Orthodox Jewishness and offers insight into the religious diversity in American communities.
Download or read book The Chosen Few written by Maristella Botticini and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-12 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.
Download or read book Christians and Jews in Angevin England written by Sarah Rees Jones and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shocking massacre of the Jews in York, 1190, is here re-examined in its historical context along with the circumstances and processes through which Christian and Jewish neighbours became enemies and victims.
Download or read book The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000 1500 written by Susan Rose and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wine has held its place for centuries at the heart of social and cultural life in western Europe. This book explains how and why this came about, providing a thematic history of wine and the wine trade in Europe in the middle ages from c.1000 to c.1500.Wine was one of the earliest commodities to be traded across the whole of western Europe. Because of its commercial importance, more is probably known about the way viticulture was undertaken and wine itself was made, than the farming methods used with most other agricultural products at the time. Susan Rose addresses questions such as:Where were vines grown at this time? How was wine made and stored? Were there acknowledged distinctions in quality? How did traders operate? What were the social customs associated with wine drinking? What view was taken by moralists? How important was its association with Christian ritual? Did Islamic prohibitions on alcohol affect the wine trade? What other functions did wine have?
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 2 The Hellenistic Age written by William David Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.
Download or read book His Pen and Ink Are a Powerful Mirror written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'His Pen and Ink are a Powerful Mirror' is a volume of collected essays in honor of Ross Brann, written by his students and friends on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The essays engage with a diverse range of Andalusi and Mediterranean literature, art, and history. Each essay begins from the organic hybridity of Andalusi literary and cultural history as its point of departure, introduce new texts, ideas, and objects into the disciplinary conversation or radically reassesses well-known ones, and represent the theoretical, methodological, and material impacts Brann has had and continues to have on the study of the literature and culture of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in al-Andalus. Contributors include: Ali Humayn Akhtar, Esperanza Alfonso, Peter Cole, Jonathan Decter, Elisabeth Hollender, Uriah Kfir, S.J. Pearce, F.E. Peters, Arturo Prats, Cynthia Robinson, Tova Rosen, Aurora Salvatierra, Raymond P. Scheindlin, Jessica Streit, David Torollo.
Download or read book The Ghetto written by Bryan Cheyette and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three hundred years the ghetto defined Jewish culture in the late medieval and early modern period in Western Europe. In the nineteenth-century it was a free-floating concept which travelled to Eastern Europe and the United States. Eastern European “ghettos”, which enabled genocide, were crudely rehabilitated by the Nazis during World War Two as if they were part of a benign medieval tradition. In the United States, the word ghetto was routinely applied to endemic black ghettoization which has lasted from 1920 until the present. Outside of America “the ghetto” has been universalized as the incarnation of class difference, or colonialism, or apartheid, and has been applied to segregated cities and countries throughout the world. In this Very Short Introduction Bryan Cheyette unpicks the extraordinarily complex layers of contrasting meanings that have accrued over five hundred years to ghettos, considering their different settings across the globe. He considers core questions of why and when urban, racial, and colonial ghettos have appeared, and who they contain. Exploring their various identities, he shows how different ghettos interrelate, or are contrasted, across time and space, or even in the same place. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book On the Margins of a Minority written by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores social additudes towards individuals on the margins of medieval European Jewish society. In medieval Europe, the much larger Christian population regarded Jews as their inferiors, but how did both Christians and Jews feel about those who were marginalized within the Ashkenazi Jewish community? In On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe, author Ephraim Shoham-Steiner explores the life and plight of three of these groups. Shoham-Steiner draws on a wide variety of late-tenth- to fifteenth-century material from both internal (Jewish) as well as external (non-Jewish) sources to reconstruct social attitudes toward these "others," including lepers, madmen, and the physically impaired. Shoham-Steiner considers how the outsiders were treated by their respective communities, while also maintaining a delicate balance with the surrounding non-Jewish community. On the Margins of a Minority is structured in three pairs of chapters addressing each of these three marginal groups. The first pair deals with the moral attitude toward leprosy and its sufferers; the second with the manifestations of madness and its causes as seen by medieval men and women, and the effect these signs had on the treatment of the insane; the third with impaired and disabled individuals, including those with limited mobility, manual dysfunction, deafness, and blindness. Shoham-Steiner also addresses questions of the religious meaning of impairment in light of religious conceptions of the ideal body. He concludes with a bibliography of sources and studies that informed the research, including useful midrashic, exegetical, homiletic, ethical, and guidance literature, and texts from responsa and halakhic rulings. Understanding and exploring attitudes toward groups and individuals considered "other" by mainstream society provides us with information about marginalized groups, as well as the inner social mechanisms at work in a larger society. On the Margins of a Minority will appeal to scholars of Jewish medieval history as well as readers interested in the growing field of disability studies.
Download or read book Jewish Law in Transition written by Hillel Gamoran and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 2008-10-17 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prohibition against lending on interest (Exodus 22:24) is a well-known biblical law: "If you lend to any one of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him." This prohibition was intended to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the unfortunate. In the course of time, it was seen to have consequences that militated against the economic welfare of Jewish society as a whole. As a result, Jewish law (halakhah) has over the centuries relaxed the biblical injunction, allowing interest charges despite the biblical prohibition. Hillel Gamoran seeks to explain how and when this law of high moral standing collapsed and fell over the course of the centuries. Talmudic rabbis believed that business agreements violated the biblical prohibition against lending in five areas: loans of produce, advance payment for the purchase of goods, buying on credit, mortgages, and investments. The Bible does not consider any of these activities, but all arise in postbiblical literature. How was the biblical law to be applied to situations that had not occurred in biblical times? And how could the rabbis allow these activities when they were hampered from doing so by the laws against lending on interest? To answer these questions, Gamoran examines the biblical prohibition against lending and postulates when it was written, why it was written, and to whom it applied. He then considers the early and later teachers of the Oral Law, the Tannaim and Amoraim, who expanded discussion of the ban in light of various business activities from 70 C.E. to 500 C.E. Finally, he explores how the original tannaitic proscriptions for each of the five activities were upheld or relaxed over the centuries. Each activity is considered in the period of the Geonim (ca. 650-1050), the Rishonim (ca. 1000-1500), and the Aharonim (ca. 1500-2000). For each period, Gamoran shows how the rabbis struggled with the law and with one another and used inventive interpretation to create the legal fictions necessary for business life to flourish.
Download or read book A Stake in the Ground Jews and Property Investment in the Medieval Crown of Aragon written by Michael Schraer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Stake in the Ground, Michael Schraer explores the economic functions of real estate amongst the Jews of the medieval crown of Aragon. He challenges the view of medieval Jews as primarily money-lenders and merchants, finding compelling evidence for extensive property trading and investment. Jews are found as landlords to Christian tenants, transferring land in dowries, wills and gifts. Property holdings were often extremely valuable. For some, property was a major part of their asset portfolios. Whilst many property transactions were linked to the credit boom, land also acted as a liquid and tradeable investment asset in its own right. This is a key contribution to the economic history of medieval Iberia and of medieval Jews. See inside the book.
Download or read book The Jews and Modern Capitalism written by Werner Sombart and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Chosen Few written by Maristella Botticini and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.
