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Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt / Mark R. Cohen.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World ; 30Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2009]Copyright date: ©2006Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource : 2 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691092720
  • 9781400826780
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 362.5/089/924062
LOC classification:
  • HV17 .C65 2008
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. A Taxonomy of the Poor -- Chapter 2. The Foreign Poor -- Chapter 3. Captives, Refugees, and Proselytes -- Chapter 4. Debt and the Poll Tax -- Chapter 5. Women and Poverty -- Chapter 6. "Naked and Starving," the Sick and Disabled -- Chapter 7. Beggars or Petitioners? -- Chapter 8. Charity -- Chapter 9. Conclusion: Poverty and Charity, Continuity and Acculturation -- Bibliography -- Index of Geniza Texts -- General Index
Summary: What was it like to be poor in the Middle Ages? In the past, the answer to this question came only from institutions and individuals who gave relief to the less fortunate. This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them. Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, were preserved largely unharmed for more than nine centuries due to an ancient custom in Judaism that prohibited the destruction of pages of sacred writing. Based on these papers, the book provides abundant testimony about how one large and important medieval Jewish community dealt with the constant presence of poverty in its midst. Building on S. D. Goitein's Mediterranean Society and inspired also by research on poverty and charity in medieval and early modern Europe, it provides a clear window onto the daily lives of the poor. It also illuminates private charity, a subject that has long been elusive to the medieval historian. In addition, Cohen's work functions as a detailed case study of an important phenomenon in human history. Cohen concludes that the relatively narrow gap between the poor and rich, and the precariousness of wealth in general, combined to make charity "one of the major agglutinates of Jewish associational life" during the medieval period.
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)9781400826780

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. A Taxonomy of the Poor -- Chapter 2. The Foreign Poor -- Chapter 3. Captives, Refugees, and Proselytes -- Chapter 4. Debt and the Poll Tax -- Chapter 5. Women and Poverty -- Chapter 6. "Naked and Starving," the Sick and Disabled -- Chapter 7. Beggars or Petitioners? -- Chapter 8. Charity -- Chapter 9. Conclusion: Poverty and Charity, Continuity and Acculturation -- Bibliography -- Index of Geniza Texts -- General Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

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

What was it like to be poor in the Middle Ages? In the past, the answer to this question came only from institutions and individuals who gave relief to the less fortunate. This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them. Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, were preserved largely unharmed for more than nine centuries due to an ancient custom in Judaism that prohibited the destruction of pages of sacred writing. Based on these papers, the book provides abundant testimony about how one large and important medieval Jewish community dealt with the constant presence of poverty in its midst. Building on S. D. Goitein's Mediterranean Society and inspired also by research on poverty and charity in medieval and early modern Europe, it provides a clear window onto the daily lives of the poor. It also illuminates private charity, a subject that has long been elusive to the medieval historian. In addition, Cohen's work functions as a detailed case study of an important phenomenon in human history. Cohen concludes that the relatively narrow gap between the poor and rich, and the precariousness of wealth in general, combined to make charity "one of the major agglutinates of Jewish associational life" during the medieval period.

Issued also in print.

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 08. Jul 2019)