Collected Essays: Volume III
Continuing his contribution to medieval Jewish intellectual history, Haym Soloveitchik focuses here on the radical pietist movement of Hasidei Ashkenaz and its main literary work, Sefer Hasidim, and on the writings and personality of the Provençal commentator Ravad of Posquières. In both areas Soloveitchik challenges mainstream views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought. Some of the essays are revised and updated versions of work previously published and some are entirely new, but in all of them Soloveitchik challenges reigning views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought.

The section on Sefer Hasidim brings together over half a century of Soloveitchik's writings on German Pietism, many of which originally appeared in obscure publications, and adds two new essays. The first of these is a methodological study of how to read this challenging work and an exposition of what constitutes a valid historical inference, while the second reviews the validity of the sociological and anthropological inferences presented in contemporary historiography. In discussing Ravad's oeuvre, Soloveitchik questions the widespread notion that Ravad's chief accomplishment was his commentary on Maimonides' Mishneh torah; his Talmud commentary, he claims, was of far greater importance and was his true masterpiece. He also adds a new study that focuses on the acrimony between Ravad, as the low-born genius of Posquières, and R. Zerahyah ha-Levi of Lunel, who belonged to the Jewish aristocracy of Languedoc, and considers the implications of that relationship.
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Collected Essays: Volume III
Continuing his contribution to medieval Jewish intellectual history, Haym Soloveitchik focuses here on the radical pietist movement of Hasidei Ashkenaz and its main literary work, Sefer Hasidim, and on the writings and personality of the Provençal commentator Ravad of Posquières. In both areas Soloveitchik challenges mainstream views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought. Some of the essays are revised and updated versions of work previously published and some are entirely new, but in all of them Soloveitchik challenges reigning views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought.

The section on Sefer Hasidim brings together over half a century of Soloveitchik's writings on German Pietism, many of which originally appeared in obscure publications, and adds two new essays. The first of these is a methodological study of how to read this challenging work and an exposition of what constitutes a valid historical inference, while the second reviews the validity of the sociological and anthropological inferences presented in contemporary historiography. In discussing Ravad's oeuvre, Soloveitchik questions the widespread notion that Ravad's chief accomplishment was his commentary on Maimonides' Mishneh torah; his Talmud commentary, he claims, was of far greater importance and was his true masterpiece. He also adds a new study that focuses on the acrimony between Ravad, as the low-born genius of Posquières, and R. Zerahyah ha-Levi of Lunel, who belonged to the Jewish aristocracy of Languedoc, and considers the implications of that relationship.
34.95 In Stock
Collected Essays: Volume III

Collected Essays: Volume III

by Haym Soloveitchik
Collected Essays: Volume III

Collected Essays: Volume III

by Haym Soloveitchik

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Overview

Continuing his contribution to medieval Jewish intellectual history, Haym Soloveitchik focuses here on the radical pietist movement of Hasidei Ashkenaz and its main literary work, Sefer Hasidim, and on the writings and personality of the Provençal commentator Ravad of Posquières. In both areas Soloveitchik challenges mainstream views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought. Some of the essays are revised and updated versions of work previously published and some are entirely new, but in all of them Soloveitchik challenges reigning views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought.

The section on Sefer Hasidim brings together over half a century of Soloveitchik's writings on German Pietism, many of which originally appeared in obscure publications, and adds two new essays. The first of these is a methodological study of how to read this challenging work and an exposition of what constitutes a valid historical inference, while the second reviews the validity of the sociological and anthropological inferences presented in contemporary historiography. In discussing Ravad's oeuvre, Soloveitchik questions the widespread notion that Ravad's chief accomplishment was his commentary on Maimonides' Mishneh torah; his Talmud commentary, he claims, was of far greater importance and was his true masterpiece. He also adds a new study that focuses on the acrimony between Ravad, as the low-born genius of Posquières, and R. Zerahyah ha-Levi of Lunel, who belonged to the Jewish aristocracy of Languedoc, and considers the implications of that relationship.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781802075854
Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press
Publication date: 02/29/2024
Series: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Pages: 470
Product dimensions: 0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Haym Soloveitchik is the Merkin Family Research Professor at Yeshiva University, New York, and the former director of the School of Jewish Studies at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also taught at the Sorbonne and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has published books in Hebrew on pawnbroking and usury, Jewish involvement in the medieval wine trade, and the use of responsa as a historical source.

Table of Contents

PART I. SEFER HASIDIM
Specific Studies
1. Three Themes in Sefer Hasidim
2. On Dating Sefer Hasidim
3. Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Hasidim I and the Influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz
4. Pietists and Kibbitzers
5. The Midrash, Sefer Hasidim, and the Changing Face of God
6. Two Notes on the Commentary on the Torah of R. Yehudah he-Hasid
7. Topics in the Hokhmat ha-Nefesh

Methodological Issues
8. On Reading Sefer Hasidim
9. Sefer Hasidim and the Social Sciences

PART II. RAVAD AND PROVENÇAL STUDIES
10. Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay
11. The Literary Remains of the Gedol ha-Mefarshim: A Study in Personal Rivalry and the Repulsion of Opposites
12. A Response to R. Buckwold's Critique of 'Rabad of Posquières', Part I
13. A Response to R. Buckwold's Critique of 'Rabad of Posquières', Part II
14. Jewish and Roman Law: A Study in Interaction
15. The Riddle of Me'iri's Recent Popularity
16. Printing and the History of Halakhah
17. Angle of Deflection

Bibliography of Manuscripts
Source Acknowledgements
Index of Names
Index of Places
Index of Subjects
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