Transmitting Jewish Traditions

Description

This book examines the impact of changing modes of cultural transmission on Jewish and Western cultures over the past two thousand years. The contributors to the volume survey some of the ways—conscious and subconscious—in which cultural elements are selected, shaped, and transmitted, and some of the ways they in turn shape the future of their cultures. Focusing on a range of Jewish cultures from late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period, the authors consider both the transformation of traditions in their travels from one contemporaneous cultural context to another and their transformation within a single culture over time. Some of the studies in the book deal with the transition from mixed oral-written cultures to ones in which written-print is nearly exclusive. Other chapters deal with the processes of transmission such as anthologizing, translating, teaching, and sermonizing. By contextualizing Jewish culture within Western culture and including a comparative perspective, the book makes an important contribution to Judaic studies as well as to other areas of the humanities concerned with questions of textuality and culture. Contents Foreword INTRODUCTION: Transmitting Tradition: Omlity and Textuality in Jewish Cultures ONE: The Oral-Cultural Context of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Greco-Roman Rhetorical Paideia, Discipleship, and the Concept of Oral Torah TWO: Between Byzantium and Islam: The Transmission of a Jewish Book in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods THREE: Omlity and the Institutionalization of Tradition: The Growth of the Geonic Yeshiva and the Islamic Madrasa FOUR: Transmission in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah FIVE: Beyond the Spoken Word: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Medieval Jewish Mysticism SIX: Publication and Reproduction of Literary Texts in Medieval Jewish Civilization: Jewish Scribality and Its Impact on the Texts Transmitted SEVEN: The Sermon as Oral Performance EIGHT: From East to West: Translating T. L. Perets in Early Twentieth-Century Germany NINE: The Kinnus Project: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Fashioning of a “National Culture” in Palestine TEN: “Secondary Intellectuals” Readers, and Readership as Agents of National-Cultural Reproduction in Modern Egypt Index