Hebrew Literature
- Hebrew literatureThe great monuments of the earliest period of Hebrew literature are the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. Parts of the Pseudepigrapha and of the Dead Sea Scrolls were also produced before the conquest of Judaea by Titus. The literature of the Jews developed mainly in the Hebrew language, although there were also works in Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic.
In the 2d cent. A.D. began the Talmudic period, which lasted well into the 6th cent. In these centuries the great anonymous encyclopedic work of religious and civil law, the Talmud, was compiled, edited, and interpreted. The Midrash—a collection of halakah (found also in the Talmud) and haggadic material—likewise forms part of the Hebrew literature of that period. In the 4th cent. the Targum to the Pentateuch and to the Prophets was finished. The 6th and 7th cent. saw the development of the Masora in Palestine. In Babylonia meanwhile many valuable additions to Hebrew literature were made by the Gaonim after the 6th cent...
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Primary Sources
- The Ben-Yehuda ProjectThe Ben-Yehuda Projectis a voluntary project to create electronic editions of Hebrew literature and make them accessible to the public.
- The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew ManuscriptsThe vision of the International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts is to allow readers across the globe to access the complete corpus of existing Hebrew manuscripts. Using state-of-the-art technology, the International Collection will preserve the digital images of the manuscripts for the future, and will enable readers and scholars to use the most innovative research and discovery tools.
Abraham in Israeli Poetry
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"Orient for Peace" founder Shlomo Elbaz and Nazareth poet Salim Jubran discuss how Abraham's sacrifice has been used as a call for reconciliation in Jewish and Arab literature.
Perspectives
Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah
In this fully revised and expanded edition, Nickelsburg introduces the reader to the broad range of Jewish literature that is not part of either the Bible or the standard rabbinic works. This includes especially the Apocrypha (such as 1 Maccabees), the Pseudepigrapha (such as 1 Enoch), the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of Josephus, and the works of Philo. This new edition also has an enormously helpful CD-ROM, including biblical citation hyperlinks to the NRSV, web links to primary documents, chapter summaries, discussion questions, and about 100 images of related sites and artefacts.
The People and the Books
Jews have long embraced their identity as "the people of the book." But outside of the Bible, much of the Jewish literary tradition remains little known to nonspecialist readers. The People and the Books shows how central questions and themes of our history and culture are reflected in the Jewish literary canon: the nature of God, the right way to understand the Bible, the relationship of the Jews to their Promised Land, and the challenges of living as a minority in Diaspora. Adam Kirsch explores eighteen classic texts, including the biblical books of Deuteronomy and Esther, the philosophy of Maimonides, the autobiography of the medieval businesswoman Glückel of Hameln, and the Zionist manifestoes of Theodor Herzl. From the Jews of Roman Egypt to the mystical devotees of Hasidism in Eastern Europe, The People and the Books brings the treasures of Jewish literature to life and offers new ways to think about their enduring power and influence.
Jewish American Writing and World Literature
Jewish American Writing and World Literature: Maybe to Millions, Maybe to Nobody studies Jewish American writers' relationships with the idea of world literature. Writers such as Sholem Asch, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anna Margolin, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley all responded to a demand to write beyond local Jewish and American audiences and toward the world, as a global market and as a transnational ideal. Beyond fame and global circulation, world literature holds up the promise of legibility, in which a threatened origin becomes the site for redemptive literary creativity. But this promise inevitably remains unfulfilled, as writers struggle to balance potential universal achievements with untranslatable realities, rendering impossible any complete arrival in the US and in the world. The work examined in this study was deeply informed by an intimate connection to Yiddish, a Jewish vernacular with its own global network and institutional ambitions. Jewish American Writing and World Literature tracks the attempts and failures, through translation, to find a home for Jewish vernacularity in the institution of world literature.
Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period
This volume describes that part of the rich literary production of ancient Judaism which was not contained in the Hebrew Bible nor in rabbinic literature. These writings originated in the Second Temple period, which proved highly creative in the midst of strong external influences and internal movements. Prime example are the Dead Sea Scrolls, documents of an extremely separatist sect. Their discovery in 1947 revolutionized our understanding of Second Temple Judaism and its literature. The scrolls appear more or less related in spirit to a group of writings trasmitted by Christianity and known as the Pseudepigrapha. Yet another group are the Apocrypha, closely related to later biblical writings and incorporated within the Greek Old Testament. Finally, the encounter with Greek culture is documented by Jewish authors writing in Greek, notably Philo and Josephus. After a historical outline which sets the stage, the chapters of this book describe and analyse these documents. Selective bibliographies for further reading conclude the chapters.
Svetlana Boym: Exile and Imagination: The Life and Work of a Critic, Artist & Author
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This documentary film is about the life and work of Svetlana Boym, literary and cultural critic, media artist, novelist and playwright. In 1980, age 21, Svetlana left the USSR for the US, unable to pursue studies at the Leningrad university because of the Jewish quota. After graduate studies at Boston University and Harvard, she became the Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard.