Revealing the Secrets of the Jews

Revealing the Secrets of the Jews PDF

Author: Jonathan Adams

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3110524341

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book presents the most recent scholarship on the sixteenth-century convert Johannes Pfefferkorn and his context. Pfefferkorn is the most (in)famous of the converts from Judaism who wrote descriptions of Jewish ceremonial life and shaped both Christian ideas about Judaism and the course of anti-Jewish polemics in the early modern period. Rather than just rehearsing the better-known aspects of Pfefferkorn’s life and the controversy with Johannes Reuchlin, this volume re-evaluates the motives behind his activities and writings as well as his role and success in the context of Dominican anti-Jewish polemics and Imperial German politics. Furthermore, it discusses other converts, who similarly "revealed the secrets of the Jews", and contains detailed studies of the campaigns against the Talmud and other Jewish books as well as the diffusion of Pfefferkorn's books and other anti-Jewish writings throughout early modern Europe. Revealing the Secrets of the Jews thus presents new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the study of religion and Christian Hebraism, and the history of anthropology and ethnography.

The Jews and the Reformation

The Jews and the Reformation PDF

Author: Kenneth Austin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0300186290

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The first comprehensive account of Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in the European Reformation ​In this rich, wide-ranging, and meticulously researched account, Kenneth Austin examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther’s writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. This book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities—and has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly.

A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews

A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews PDF

Author: Avner Falk

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 868

ISBN-13: 9780838636602

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This includes the evolution of the Hebrew religion as a projective response to the inner conflicts produced by the human family; the sociopsychological development of the Israelite kingdoms in Canaan; the fascinating duality of Jewish life in the "Diaspora"; and the emotional ties of the Jews to their idealized motherland from the Babylonian exile to modern political Zionism.

Respect for the Jews

Respect for the Jews PDF

Author: Franz Posset

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-09-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1532670907

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Eight different historical-theological studies are assembled here under the title Respect for the Jews. They focus primarily on positive Catholic attitudes toward Jews during the turbulent years of the first half of the sixteenth century. The number of authors and texts are relatively small, but need to be brought out into the open. For the first time, a speech in praise of the language of the Jews by the early ecumenist, Georg Witzel (1501–1573), is made available in English. Other Catholic Hebraists who are featured include Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), Matthaeus Adrianus (ca. 1470–1521), Robert Wakefield (died 1537), and Nicolaus Winmann (ca. 1500–1550). Their brilliant works are presented in front of the sinister backdrop of the vicious attacks against the Jews by the well-educated Catholic convert of Jewish descent, Johann Pfefferkorn (ca. 1469–1521), a self-appointed Catholic missionary to the Jews, and also against the background of the scandalous outbursts of the Grobian Reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546). Volume 4 of the author’s Collected Works fosters the idea that Jews and Christians are “study partners,” rather than antagonists—as visualized in the new statue “Synagogue and Church in Our Time” (as shown on the cover).

A Mirror of the Jewish Religion: a Critical Edition and Translation of Christian Petter Löwe's Speculum Religionis Judaicæ (1732)

A Mirror of the Jewish Religion: a Critical Edition and Translation of Christian Petter Löwe's Speculum Religionis Judaicæ (1732) PDF

Author: Jonathan Adams

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-01-29

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 3110986930

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1732, Christian Petter Löwe, a Jewish convert to Lutheranism, published his Speculum Religionis Judaicæ (Mirror of the Jewish Religion), a description of the Jewish religion and ceremonies as practised at the time. Over 50 years before Jews were permitted to settle in Sweden in 1782, the genre of Christian ethnographical writing about Jews and Jewish rituals had arrived in Sweden from Germany. In this volume, Jonathan Adams (University of Gothenburg) introduces the background to Löwe's "mirror" by looking at both the earlier history of Jews in Sweden and the phenomenon of ethnographical writing about Jews. The text of Speculum is presented in its original Swedish with a translation into English facing on the opposite pages. This edition includes notes explaining technical terms, identifying people and places, and translating Hebrew words and phrases. The volume also includes two works published in Sweden prior to Speculum: Bezelius' Die Herrlichkeit des Christenthums (The Glory of Christianity [excerpts], 1684) and Seeligmann's Jüdischer Ceremonien (On Jewish Ceremonies, 1725). The volume should be of interest to students and researchers of Jewish and Scandinavian history as well as the history of Jewish-Christian relations.

Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith

Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith PDF

Author: Michael Thomson Walton

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0814338003

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A biography of Anthonius Margaritha, convert to Christianity and reporter on Jewish life and religious practices. Born in the 1490s, Anthonius Margaritha was the grandson, son, and brother of noted rabbis and was perhaps the best-known Jew of his generation in Germany to convert to Christianity. When he became a Christian in 1521, he began a series of writings that were built on his Jewish life and learning but were intended to reveal the defects of his former faith. These writings, including a translation of the Hebrew prayer book into German and a refutation of the faith, The Entire Jewish Faith (Der gantz Jüdisch glaub), are well known to scholars, but Margaritha himself has been studied largely as an ethnographic type. In Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany, author Michael T. Walton looks more closely at Margaritha's life with the help of archival research and Margaritha's own writings. To present a full picture of Margaritha, Walton examines his life both before and after conversion. Walton details Margaritha's family history and Jewish life in a Christian Germany, including social customs and worship practices. After conversion, Walton examines Margaritha's time spent as a Hebrew teacher, polemicist, and paterfamilias and analyzes Margaritha's various works for their ethnographic and scholarly-polemical content. One thread that runs through Margaritha's life and writings, detailed here, is the importance to him of his debate with noted rabbi Joseph of Rosheim. Margaritha lost the debate and was imprisoned, but he continually referred to the issues raised and defended the correctness of his position in his treatises. Ultimately, this biography reveals Margaritha as a man who converted out of genuine conviction, but whose life thereafter must have been much different from what he anticipated. Scholars of Jewish and Christian history as well as those interested in German history, Hebrew pedagogy, and religious conversion will appreciate this thorough study.

A Reformation Sourcebook

A Reformation Sourcebook PDF

Author: Michael W. Bruening

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2017-04-05

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1442635703

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

During the Reformation, Europeans were engaged in a debate that would alter the course of European history. This debate was about how to understand and practice the Christian faith. Never before had so many people weighed in on a topic of such importance. This book presents the debates of the Reformation era through over eighty primary sources. Some of the documents present formal debates. Others represent informal debates or disputes, with one text responding directly to the other. Still other sections present texts that offer divergent approaches to or perspectives on specific ideas. These too were part of the century-long debate that characterized the Reformation. The author provides an essay on how to read primary sources. Each chapter opens with a brief introduction, and each group of primary sources is preceded by information on historical context as well as focus questions. Further readings are provided at the end of each chapter, and a map of Europe divided by religions is included.

The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim

The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim PDF

Author: Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2006-09-30

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 9047410807

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Now in English translation, this critical edition of historical writings by Joseph of Rosheim, sixteenth-century leader of German Jewry, provides important information about the situation of the Jews in the early modern Holy Roman Empire as well as fascinating insights into Christian-Jewish relations in the Reformation period.