Description
Book SynopsisComposed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or Book of the Pietists, is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah''s messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries.
In Sefer Hasidim and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjun
Trade Review
"Ivan G. Marcus lays out in a new way how Sefer Hasidim develops and functions as an Ashkenazic book. The summary, assessment, and synthesis of prior research he presents is enlightening and helpful." * Ephraim Kanarfogel, Yeshiva University *
