Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies (BRGS): Faculty Publications

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12202/38

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10 Luke 22:53: “When I Was With You Daily in the Temple”—What Did the Jerusalem Temple Look Like in the Time of Jesus? Some Reflections on the Façade of Herod’s Temple
(Brill, 2016) Schertz, Peter; Fine, Steven; Schertz, Peter; Fine, Steven
The façade of Herod’s temple is well known to scholars and general viewers alike. It is a large square temple with a flat roof typical of Near Eastern temples, a white building trimmed copiously with gold. This image appears on tourist paraphernalia, and postcards, on key chains and tee-shirts, in bible commentaries and in religious sites. A large model of this temple appears at The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, and in less expansive sites across North America. In fact, the model that has become so popular and even canonical was created only in 1966, the brainchild of Israeli archaeologist and historian, Michael Avi- Yonah. Set in the Holy Land Hotel in western Jerusalem, this temple was part of a vast model of Jerusalem during the years leading up to the destruction of the city by the Roman armies of Vespasian and Titus in 70 CE.1 Avi-Yonah was working within a tradition of temple models that reaches back centuries, but which had gained momentum with the rise of Zionism and the series of models created for fairs—both regional and world fairs.2 Avi-Yonah’s, however, was a permanent exhibition, the equal of Mussolini’s model of imperial Rome at the Museo della Civiltà Romana.3¶ Avi-Yonah’s model was a creative act of profound scholarship, erudition and caution4 A historian of the first order, Avi-Yonah pieced together scattered references to the temple in the writings of Josephus (who had served in Herod’s temple as a priest), memories preserved in later rabbinic literature and the New Testament along with his deep knowledge of both Herodian architecture at Masada, Herodion, Caesarea Maritima and Sebastia and of Roman architecture and architectural writings from the age of Augustus, Herod’s patron.5 The resulting model was so successful, that it has become the iconic image of the Second temple for Jews and Christians worldwide.6 A mark of its success is the large number of models constructed in recent years based upon Avi-Yonah’s, yet “fixing” this standard by imagining a Temple that conforms to the beliefs of each interpreter.7
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1286 R. Meir ben Barukh (Maharam) of Rothenburg, the leading rabbinic figure of his day, is arrested in Lombardy and delivered to Rudolph of Habsburg
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1997) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; 0000-0002-7539-7802
The arrest, imprisonment, and death (in 1293) of R. Meir of Rothenburg signaled the end of the tosafist era. For close to two hundred years, rabbinic scholars in Ashkenaz (northern France and Germany) had been engaged in talmudic and legal (halakhahic) studies that were grounded in a dialectical method that revolutionized the nature of rabbinic interpretation. The study of rabbinic literature in the twelfth century was marked by sustained intellectual creativity, a hallmark of the larger twelfth-century renaissance that changed the face of scholarship in Christian Europe. Almost every section of the Talmud was subjected to close, critical analysis and compared with or contrasted to other relevant talmudic and rabbinic texts. Crucial to this process was the work of R. Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi) of Troyes (1040-1105 ), who attended the academies at both Mainz and Worms, the two major yeshivot of the pre-Crusade period. Rashi's running commentary to most tractates of the Talmud enabled his successors to apply new strategics·of interpretation. The comments produced by Rashi's descendents and other students became known as Tosafot, or addenda. Given their wide scope on the one hand, and their attention to textual detail and nuance on the other, the comments were intended to complement or supplement the talmudic text itself as much as they were meant to probe or to enhance Rashi's commentaries. The scholars who composed the Tosafot were known as ba'alei ha-Tosafot (tosafists).
Open Access
A Hebrew fragment in the Municipal Archive of Münster as a witness to a little-known ritual practice
(Springer Nature Journals, 2024) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; Kogman-Appel, K.
The Stadtarchiv in Münster, Germany holds a medieval Hebrew fragment with portions of the daily Shema Yisrael prayer. Measuring 510 mm in height, this fragment is but a quarter of a large-sized parchment sheet, which was designed to be hung on a wall. This study introduces the fragment and describes its material features and then suggests its possible function against the backdrop of talmudic discussions on biblical texts that are incorporated in prayer. In light of the halakhic position that biblical verses should not be recited from memory but only from a written text, the original sheet was intended to provide worshippers with an accessible copy of the Shema text, since many did not have personal prayerbooks.
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A tradition of acceptance: Jews and their basketball players at an Irish Catholic college
(NYU Press, 2023) Gurock, Jeffrey S.; Diner, Hasia; Grey, M. N.
xamines how Irish and Jewish Americans defined their place in a complex society. The story of America is the story of the unlikely groups of immigrants brought together by their shared outsider status. Urban American life took much of its shape from the arrival of Irish and Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Forged in America is the story of how Irish America and Jewish America collided, cooperated, and collaborated in the cities where they made their homes, all the while shaping American identity and nationhood as we know it. Bringing together leading scholars in their fields, this volume sheds light on the underexplored histories of Irish and Jewish collaboration. While mutual antagonism was clearly evident, so too were opportunities for cooperation, as settled Irish immigrants served to model, mentor, and mediate for Jewish newcomers. Together, the chapters in this volume draw fascinating portraits that show mutuality in action and demonstrate its cultural reverberations.
Open Access
A-coloring Consonants and Furtive Pataḥ in Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic According to the Tiberian Masorah
(Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ; באר-שבע : הוצאת הספרים של אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב, 2009) Steiner, Richard; Sivan, Daniel; Talshir, David; Qimron, Elisha.; Sivan, Daniel.; Cohen, Chaim, 1947-
Elisha Qimron’s תיארקמ תימרא is an important work that contains many thought-provoking discussions. In this note, I would like to address three questions raised, directly or indirectly, by his brief discussion of furtive patah˙ (הבונג חתפ). How did the Tiberian Masoretes pronounce furtive patah˙? How did that pronunciation originate? Why is there no furtive patah˙ in the Biblical Aramaic m.s. suffixed pronoun הֵּ-?
Open Access
Abraham as the great (un)circumciser
(Project TABS, 2024-11-15) Simkovich, Malka Zeiger; 0000-0002-6556-7732
Judaism has a long tradition of linking the practice of circumcision with Abraham the patriarch. Indeed, the ancient liturgy recited at a Jewish circumcision ceremony climaxes with the blessing of the mohel, the circumciser, who recites, “Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, and has commanded us to bring him into the covenant of Abraham, our forefather.” Abraham’s role as witness to every infant boy’s entrance into the covenantal community seems natural; after all, he is the first individual mentioned in the Bible to have circumcised himself (Gen. 17:24), and does so as a sign of his unconditional commitment to God.
Open Access
Abraham ben David of Posquieres
(Chicago: Gitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; 0000-0002-7539-7802
Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquieres (known as Rabad) was one of the most important and prolific rabbinic figures in southern France during the second half of the 12th century. Born in Narbonne, he founded and supported an academy in Posquieres using his personal wealth. A son-in-law and student of Abraham hen Isaac Av Beit Din of Narbonne and a srudent of Moses ben Joseph and Meshullam of Lune!, Rabad was held in the highest esteem by later rabbinic luminaries such as Nahmanides, Solomon ibn Adret (Rashba), and David ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz).
Open Access
Addenda to ‘The Case for Fricative–Laterals in Proto–Semitic'
(Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz, 1991) Steiner, Richard C.
Fourteen works by Wolf Leslau are cited in The Case for Fricative-Laterals in ProtoSemitic (Steiner 1977; hereafter: Fricative-Laterals) - by far the most of any author. One of those fourteen, Lexique Soqotri, contains remarks on lateral fricatives which played a formative role in my thinking on that topic and contributed in no small measure to my eventual decision to write a doctoral dissertation on it. It is, therefore, very fitting that these addenda to Fricative-Laterals should appear in this Festschrift. (from Introduction)
Open Access
The Adjudication of Fines in Ashkenaz during the Medieval and Early Modern Periods and the Preservation of Communal Decorum.
(Yerushalayim : Bet midrash le-mishpaṭ ʻIvri, Faḳulṭah le-mishpatim, Uniṿersiṭat Tel-Aviv : Sifre Ṿahrman,, 2018) Kanarfogel, Ephraim
The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Qamma 84a–b) rules that fines and other assigned payments in situations where no direct monetary loss was incurred--or where the damages involved are not given to precise evaluation or compensation--can be adjudicated only in the Land of Israel, at a time when rabbinic judges were certified competent to do so by the unbroken authority of ordination (semikhah). In addition to the implications for the internal workings of the rabbinic courts during the medieval period and beyond, this ruling seriously impacted the maintaining of civility and discipline within the communities. Most if not all of the payments that a person who struck another is required to make according to Torah law fall into the category of fines or forms of compensation that are difficult to assess and thus could not be collected in the post-exilic Diaspora (ein danin dinei qenasot be-Bavel)
Open Access
Affricated Ṣade in the semitic languages.
(The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1982) Steiner, Richard C
Open Access
Afterword: Why the Samaritans?
(Brill, 2022) Fine, Steven; Fine, Steven
Afterward
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Agnon's Tales of the Land of Israel
(Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf & Stock, 2021) Fine, Steven; Saks, Jeffrey; Carmy, Shalom
"As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile," S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. "But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem." Agnon's act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon's Hebrew writing. Depending on which side of the lens one views Eretz Yisrael through, the vision of what can be achieved there appears clearer or more distorted.These themes wove themselves into the presentations at an international conference convened in 2016 by the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies in New York City, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Agnon's Nobel Prize. The essays from that conference, collected here, explore Zionism's aspirations and shortcomings and the yearning for the Land from afar from S. Y. Agnon's Galician hometown, which served as a symbol of Jewish longing worldwide. Contributing authors: Shulamith Z. Berger, Shalom Carmy, Zafrira Cohen Lidovsky, Steven Gine, Hillel Halkin, Avraham Holtz, Alan Mintz, Jeffrey Saks, Moshe Simkovich, Laura Wiseman, and Wendy Zierler Source: Publisher
Open Access
Albounout "Frankincense" and Alsounalph "Oxtongue": Phoenician-Punic Botanical Terms with Prothetic Vowels from an Egyptian Papyrus and a Byzantine Codex
(Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2001) Steiner, Richard
The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, usually dated to the third century c.E. on paleographic grounds, contains a Semitic loanword that appears to have been overlooked by Semitists. In V/6, the word appears in Demotic alphabetic characters as xxx; in XXIX/17, 24, it appears in an alphabetic cipher substituting for an Old Coptic ^ (albounout)'• The meaning of the word in Egyptian in reasonably clear. The occurrence in Demotic characters (V/6) is written with the same pellet determinative as bl "myrrh" in the previous line (V/5)2. The substance to which it refers is put on a brazier (XXIX/17), presumably functioning as an incense burner. (from Introduction).
Open Access
The ’Aliyah of “Three Hundred Rabbis” in 1211: Tosafist Attitudes toward Settling in the Land of Israel
(Philadelphia : Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, [1910-, 1986-01) Kanarfogel, Ephraim
Quite often in the study of medieval Jewish history we find that an event which occurred in a particular country is recorded most comprehensively in a later source which emanates from a completely different area and milieu. A case in point is the following happening chronicled in the Shebet Yehudah, a major oeuvre of sixteenth century Sefardic historiography: ¶In the year 4971 (= 1211 C.E.), God inspired the Rabbis of France and England to go to Jerusalem. They numbered more than three hundred and were accorded great honor by the king. They built for themselves synagogues and houses of study. Our teacher the great kohen R. Jonathan ha-Kohen went there as well. A miracle occurred. They prayed for rain and were answered, and the name of Heaven was sanctified because of them.1 ¶The first task of the historian is to attempt to ascertain, from sources that are contemporary to this event, whether such an impressive emigration did in fact take place.(from Introduction)
Open Access
Ancient Hebrew
(Routledge, 1997) Steiner, Richard; Hetzron, Robert
Open Access
Anthropomorphism and rationalist modes of thought in medieval Ashkenaz: The case R. Yosef Bekhor Shor
(Stuttgart : Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, c2002-, 2009) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; 0000-0002-7539-7802
Medieval rabbinic scholarship had to contend with a series of biblical and Talmudic passages which suggest that God appeared in different guises or forms to prophets and other leading religious figures, in ways that allowed them to apprehend Him. Those rabbinic scholars who were philosophically inclined (such as Maimonides) tended to exclude the possibility of any actual physicality in these appearances. A prophet only was allowed to perceive the physical presence of God in his own mind or imagination, even though this did not occur in a physical sense.
Open Access
Anti-Semitism: An overview
(The Jewish Publication Society., 1986) Berger, David; Berger, David
We shall never fully understand anti-Semitism. Deep-rooted, complex, endlessly persistent, constantly changing yet remaining the same, it is a phenomenon that stands at the intersection of history, sociology, economics, political science, religion, and psychology. But it is often the most elusive phenomena that are the most intriguing, and here fascination and profound historical significance merge to make this subject a central challenge to Jewish historians. ¶ Despite its nineteenth-century context and its often inappropriate racial implications, the term anti-Semitism has become so deeply entrenched that resistance to its use is probably futile. The impropriety of the term, however. makes it all the more important to clarify as fully as possible the range of meanings that can legitimately be assigned to it. Essentially, anti-Semitism means either of the following: ( 1 ) hostility toward Jews as a group which results from no legitimate cause or greatly exceeds any reasonable, ethical response to genuine provocation; or (2) a pejorative perception of Jewish physical or moral traits which is either utterly groundless or a result of irrational generalization and exaggeration. (from Introduction)
Open Access
The Appointment of Hazzanim in Medieval Ashkenaz: Communal Policy and Individual Religious Prerogatives
(Beer-Sheva : Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2009) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; Kreisel, Howard; Huss, Boaz; Ehrlich, Uri; Stern, Max; 0000-0002-7539-7802
During the pre-Crusade period in medieval Ashkenaz, a cantor or prayer leader (hazzan, shaliah tsibbur)1 was considered to be not only an important communal functionary, but also a veritable respository of prayer. The hazzan knew the prayers thoroughly and, to a large extent, by heart; he knew the traditions of the complex religious poems, piyyutim, which the community recited (and was often capable of adding to those piyyutim); and he was a source of law, practice and instruction with respect to prayer.2 Indeed, even during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond, the cantor was frequently a leading rabbinic scholar of the community, who combined the necessary areas of knowledge and the requisite set of cantorial skills, together with a reputation for unassailable observance, piety and devotion to the community.3
Open Access
Approaches to conversion in medieval European rabbinic literature: From Ashkenaz to Sefarad
(New York : The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 2015) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; 0000-0002-7539-7802
Evidence for the successful conversion of non-Jews in Ashkenaz (northern France and Germany) during the High Middle Ages (1050-1300) can be found within the rabbinic literature of this period, an especially felicitous development given the virtual absence of any archival material that might shed light on this phenomenon. 1 R. Joel b. Isaac h a -Levi of Bonn (d. c. 1200, father of Rabiah and a noted German Tosafist and halakhist in his own right) describes an actual case of conversion in which the convert was able to embrace Judaism fully and completely: ''And the Spirit went forth from the Lord and rested in the heart of that man (ורוח נשא מאת ה וינח בלב האיש הזה), R. Abraham son of Abraham our father:'2
Open Access
Approaches to Prophecy in Northern French Biblical Exegesis and the Thought of the German Pietists [Heb.]
(Jerusalem & New York: Bialik Institute & YU Press, 2020) Kanarfogel, Ephraim; Koller, Aaron J.; Cohen, Mordechai Z.; Moshavi, Adina; 0000-0002-7539-7802