Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume reflect the author’s lifelong interest in the history of halakhah. What stimulated change, and why? What happened when strong forces impinged on halakhic observance and communities had to adapt to new circumstances? The volume opens with a brief description of the dramatis personae who figure throughout the essays: Rashi and the Tosafists. Further essays discuss halakhic commentaries and their authors; usury, moneylending, and pawnbroking; Gentile wine; and the self-image of the Ashkenazic community. Throughout, Haym Soloveitchik shows that the line between adaptation and deviance is a fine one, and that where a society draws that line is revelatory of its values and its self-perception. Many of the essays presented here are already well known in the field; two are completely new. Most of those previously published have been updated, and the major essay on pawnbroking has been significantly expanded.
Trade Review‘In our generation the premier practitioner of history of, and through, halacha is Haym Soloveitchik . . . in addition to his many other merits, [he] is an elegant stylist . . . Part of the pleasure of reading him is that there is more learning and illumination to be found in his remarks dropped along the way than in the pages of a lesser scholar . . . profound, poignant essays.’
David Wolpe,
Tablet MagazineTable of ContentsPart I. Overview of the Tosafist Movement
1. The Printed Page of the Talmud: The Commentaries and their Authors
2. Catastrophe and Creativity: Ashkenaz—1096, 1242, 1306, and 1298
3. The Halakhic Isolation of the Ashkenazic Community
Part II. Usury and Moneylending
4. Usury, Jewish Law
5. The Jewish Attitude to Usury in the High and Late Middle Ages (1000–1500)
6. Pawnbroking: A Study in Ribbit and of the Halakhah in Exile
Part III. The Ban on Gentile Wine and its Link to Moneylending
7. Can Halakhic Texts Talk History?
8. Halakhah, Taboo, and the Origin of Jewish Moneylending in Germany
Part IV. Some General Conclusions
9. Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example
10. ‘Religious Law and Change’ Revisited
11. A Note on Deviance in Eleventh-Century Ashkenaz
12. On Deviance: A Reply to David Malkiel
Review Essay. Yishaq (Eric) Zimmer, ’Olam ke-Minhago Noheg
Bibliography of Manuscripts
Indexes
