Rav Hayya, a Jewish scholar of the tenth century, developed an organized theory of economics. His theory was culled from various Talmudic dictums as well as from Muslim thinkers that were known in the scholarly milieu of his time. Gleaning from these eclectic sources, Rav Hayya built his original view of what today is referred to as microeconomics. As such, he appears to have been the first in the Jewish world to create a coherent economic theory. In this paper, I will focus on four main principles that constitute his theory. I will then continue in comparing Rav Hayya's theory to other medieval theorists of his milieu. Integral to Rav Hayya's economic theory was a theological framework, making economic activity something in which God's hand is involved.
This paper presents a philosophical reading of Immanuel of Rome's Tophet and Eden and considers its place within the history of Jewish philosophy and Hebrew literature. I argue that Tophet and Eden promotes an intellectualist doctrine of reward and punishment, pointing out that Immanuel's rationalist position is more radical than generally thought. I then contextualize Tophet and Eden within the larger fields of Jewish philosophy and Hebrew literature, challenging common assumptions about the attitude towards philosophy in 14th century Italy. Tracing debates about philosophy among Immanuel's predecessors and contemporaries, I suggest that the espousal of philosophical values in Tophet and Eden constitutes an extreme instance of the incorporation of rationalist philosophy into the realm of medieval Hebrew belles-lettres. Viewed in its context, Tophet and Eden emerges as a uniquely radical work of Hebrew literature.
This essay seeks to demonstrate how the study of the many Jewish magical sources produced and circulated in medieval and early modern Italy-for the most part still unpublished and unknown to the scholarly community-can lead to a more nuanced reconstruction of the cultural and religious encounter between Jews and Christian in this historical context. Through a case-study focused on the "operation of the saucer" (operazione della caraffa), a form of lecanomancy abundantly practiced by both Jews and Christians, the essay proposes a new methodology which integrates the analysis of inquisitorial sources with that of amulets and manuscript codices of Jewish magic. In the article, several archival sources in Italian and excerpts from manuscript codices and fragments in Hebrew that can be related to the operazione della caraffa are edited, translated and commented upon (in most of the case, for the first time). The various sources are then put into dialogue to understand the history of this specific magical technique in late medieval and early modern Italy, as well as the relations between the Jews and Christians who used to practice it.
The narrator of "The German Refugee", an assimilated American Jew, grapples with a refugee's suffering and with his failure to acculturate in America after emigrating from Nazi Germany. The author underlines the necessity of carrying out the voice of the unheard through the mediation of writing, staging a character who is haunted in anticipation by the horrors of the Holocaust, making anachronism a meaningful trope in the narrative. This short story can be construed as a parable on the mediation of suffering and a reflection on the duties of American writers towards the survivors of the Holocaust.
Traditional Jewish religious belief speaks of a divinely revealed Torah, authored by Moses. Yet, when exactly did Moses write the Torah? Did he compose it all at the same time, or over the course of several years? This study will examine the various answers proposed by the Jewish tradition, over the generations, to these two questions. It will address the methodological difficulties raised by this subject/belief, present the similarities and the differences between the numerous scholarly positions, and also attempt to explore the ever-changing position that this concept occupies in the history of Jewish Biblical scholarship.
