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"Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe / Ivan G. Marcus.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Jewish Culture and ContextsPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812295009
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 296.3/6 23
LOC classification:
  • BJ1287.J83
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Abbreviations of Sefer Hasidim Manuscripts -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Sefer Hasidim as an Open Book -- Chapter 2. Rewriting Jewish Pietist Traditions -- Chapter 3. Judah he-Hasid’s Life and Legends -- Chapter 4. Ashkenazic Hebrew Book Writing in Historical Context -- A Descriptive Catalog of the Manuscripts and Editions of Sefer Hasidim -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: Composed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or "Book of the Pietists," is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah's messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries.In "Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjunctive, yet self-contained, segments, which were then combined into multiple alternative versions, each equally authoritative. While Sefer Hasidim offers the clearest example of this model of composition, Marcus argues that it was not unique: the production of Ashkenazic books in small and easily rearranged paragraphs is a literary and cultural phenomenon quite distinct from anything practiced by the Christian authors of northern Europe or the Sephardic Jews of the south. According to Marcus, Judah, in authoring Sefer Hasidim in this manner, not only resisted Greco-Roman influences on Ashkenazic literary form but also extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812295009

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Abbreviations of Sefer Hasidim Manuscripts -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Sefer Hasidim as an Open Book -- Chapter 2. Rewriting Jewish Pietist Traditions -- Chapter 3. Judah he-Hasid’s Life and Legends -- Chapter 4. Ashkenazic Hebrew Book Writing in Historical Context -- A Descriptive Catalog of the Manuscripts and Editions of Sefer Hasidim -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Composed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or "Book of the Pietists," is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah's messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries.In "Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjunctive, yet self-contained, segments, which were then combined into multiple alternative versions, each equally authoritative. While Sefer Hasidim offers the clearest example of this model of composition, Marcus argues that it was not unique: the production of Ashkenazic books in small and easily rearranged paragraphs is a literary and cultural phenomenon quite distinct from anything practiced by the Christian authors of northern Europe or the Sephardic Jews of the south. According to Marcus, Judah, in authoring Sefer Hasidim in this manner, not only resisted Greco-Roman influences on Ashkenazic literary form but also extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)