Description
Book SynopsisThis book contains a collection of eight annotated translations of responsa, alongside the original Hebrew texts, focusing on the post-expulsion Spanish-Portuguese communities of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. This collection will acquaint the reader with Jews who, following their expulsion, settled in the Ottoman Empire, in Palestine under the Mamluks, in Amsterdam and in Brazil. The period of the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula was a tragic time in Jewish history, but the revitalization of the post-expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in new locales is testimony to the human spirit and determination.
The volume includes eight chapters, each built around one responsum from one of the great halakhic authorities of the time. Topics include excommunication in Amsterdam, ʻagunot, inheritance rights of a converso son, obligatory contracts and breach of agreement, heresy and humanist scholarship, informing on someone to the Venetian Inquisition, and more.
Read a sample: bit.ly/koren-sampler
Trade Review"In Responsa in a Historical Context, Debby Koren makes these fascinating yet extraordinarily difficult documents come alive. She succeeds admirably in overcoming the challenge that faces all who would write about responsa for an audience of non-specialists, namely to offer a sufficient explanation of the historical and halakhic (Jewish legal) context behind each submitted question without allowing that explanation to overwhelm the text and to drown out the unique voice of the rabbinical author. The book is an indispensable source of information, both on the history of the period it covers and on the ways that rabbis thought, how they utilized textual analysis, logic, and rhetoric to craft answers to the questions that Jews asked.”
— Mark E. Washofsky, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Law and Practice, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Overview
The Halakhic Discourse in Responsa
Translation and Presentation
The Eight Responsa
Notes on Translation, Transliteration, and Citations
Glossary
Abbreviations
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
On Excommunication
Responsa
1. Divorce out of Love: A Sixteenth-Century Woman’s Story—Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra Responsum 1,398
2. The Tax Cut Lobby—Rabbi Joseph ibn Lev Responsum 4:14
3. Are You Calling Me a Heretic?!—Zᵉqan Aharon 25
4. Families Torn Apart—Rabbi Moses ben Joseph di Trani Responsum 1,142
5. What’s in a Name?—Rabbi Samuel de Medina Yo-re Deʻa 199
6. Is Your Blood Any Redder? The Case of an Informer in the Venetian Inquisition—Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham Ha-Kohen Responsum 4,31
7. Excommunication in Amsterdam—Baḥ (Ha-Yᵉshanot) 5
8. South of the Equator, in the New World—
Torat Ḥayyim 3,3
Index
