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.
70.95 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: 9781904113997
Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press
Publication date: 11/30/2020
Series: Jewish Cultural Studies
Pages: 464
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(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

Note on Transliteration and Conventions Used in the Text xv

Part I Sefer Hasidim

Specific Studies

1 Three Themes in Sefer Hasidim 5

2 On Dating Sefer Hasidim 70

3 Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Hasidim I and the Influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz 79

4 Pietists and Kibbitzers 116

5 The Midrash, Sefer Hasidim, and the Changing Face of God 135

6 Two Notes on the Commentary on the Torah of R. Yehudah he-Hasid 152

7 Topics in the Hokhmat ha-Nefesh 161

Methodological Issues

8 On Reading Sefer Hasidim 179

9 Sefer Hasidim and the Social Sciences 223

Part II Ravad and Provençal Studies

10 Ravad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay 253

11 The Literary Remains of the Gedol ha-Mefarshim: A Study in Personal Rivalry and the Repulsion of Opposites 292

12 A Response to R. Buckwold's Critique of 'Rabad of Posquières', Part I 313

13 A Response to R. Buckwold's Critique of 'Rabad of Posquières', Part II 365

14 Jewish and Roman Law: A Study in Interaction 379

15 The Riddle of Me'iri's Recent Popularity 394

16 Printing and the History of Halakhah 402

17 Angle of Deflection 407

Bibliography of Manuscripts 423

Source Acknowledgments 430

Index of Names 433

Index of Places 441

Index of Subjects 443

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