Jewish Life In The Middle Ages
, by Abrahams, Israel
- ISBN: 9781417947508 | 1417947500
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 9/30/2004
Highly readable social history comprehensively examines life of European Jews, from approximately the late 10th-century to the early 1500s. Topics include social functions of the synagogue, communal organizations, love, courtship and marriage, monogamy and home life, trades and occupations, medieval pastimes and personal relations between Christians and Jews.
Israel Abrahams (1858-1924) was a preeminent English scholar. A reader in rabbinic and talmudic literature at Cambridge, he was a pivotal figure in English intellectual life. A community leader, literary reviewer, and editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, Abrahams was the author of many essays and books
| Preface | p. vii |
| Introduction | p. xvii |
| The Centre of Social Life | |
| Social functions of the synagogue | |
| Relations of the Jewish life to European conditions in the middle ages | |
| The synagogue as a moral agency | |
| Flagellation | |
| Announcements of business transactions during public worship | |
| Jews share one another's joys and sorrows | |
| The wedding odes | |
| Martyrologies | |
| Life in the Synagogue | |
| Attitude of Jews towards the synagogue | |
| Jewish notion of decorum at prayer | |
| Special praying dress | |
| Gossip during divine service | |
| Decay of the sermon in the middle ages | |
| The sale of synagogal 'honours.' | |
| Separation of the sexes | |
| Ecclesiastical art | |
| Synagogue architecture, decoration, and music | |
| The synagogal rights of boys | |
| Maintaining discipline | |
| Synagogue and school | |
| Communal Organization | |
| Rabbis and the civil government | |
| Rabbinical synods | |
| The taxation of the Jews | |
| The poll-tax | |
| Growth of an aristocracy of wealth | |
| Severe treatment of informers by the Jewish authorities; the death penalty | |
| Jewish jurisdiction | |
| Prisons | |
| Excommunication | |
| Jewish communal officers | |
| Date and method of election | |
| The Shamash and the Schulklopfer | |
| Government by tekanah or voluntary ordinance | |
| Jewish life regulated by a series of such communal ordinances | |
| Institution of the Ghetto | |
| Origin of the name 'ghetto.' | |
| Jewish tendency to concentrate in separate quarters of the town | |
| Various synonyms for ghetto in Spain and Germany | |
| Motive for founding the ghetto | |
| Overcrowding | |
| Ghetto rules and the Jus chazaka or tenant-right | |
| The public bath | |
| The Jews' inn | |
| The dancing-hall | |
| The cemetery or 'House of Life.' | |
| Emblems on the tombs | |
| Family vaults | |
| Social Morality | |
| Domestic virtues of the Jews | |
| The Jewish character | |
| The man and the home | |
| Marital fidelity | |
| Idealization of passion | |
| The marriage of Rabbis | |
| Absentee husbands | |
| The Jewish badge and moral offences | |
| The Slave Trade | |
| Cessation of slavery among Jews after the Babylonian exile | |
| The Church and slavery in the middle ages | |
| Jewish slave-dealers and slave-owners | |
| Treatment of slaves | |
| The general subject of social morality resumed: Jews free from serious crimes | |
| Clipping the coinage | |
| Jew and Gentile | |
| Legal fictions | |
| The annulment of vows | |
| Monogamy and the Home | |
| Monogamy a Jewish custom in pre-Christian times | |
| Talmudic view of marriage is based on monogamy | |
| Bigamy exceptionally allowed both by Church and Synagogue | |
| Evil influence of Islam | |
| Prevalence of divorce | |
| Parents and children | |
| Jewish salutations and tokens of respect | |
| Home discipline | |
| Religion and the home life | |
| The married Rabbi | |
| Friday night; the meal and the hymns | |
| Table-songs | |
| Coffee and tobacco | |
| Home Life (continued) | |
| Family feasts and fasts | |
| Jahrzeit | |
| Hospitality and the growth of travelling mendicants | |
| 'Commandment meals' | |
| Taxes on hospitality | |
| Stone houses of the Jews | |
| A rich Jew's house in Regensburg in the fifteenth century | |
| Hours for meals on weekdays and festivals | |
| Effects of mysticism on the home life of the Jews | |
| The position of woman | |
| Christians in the service of Jews | |
| Jewish domestics | |
| Effects of persecution | |
| Love and Courtship | |
| Hebrew love-poems by Spanish Jews | |
| Satires on women | |
| Growth of child-marriage | |
| Chivalry | |
| The professional matchmaker or Shadchan | |
| Marriage by proxy | |
| Courtship at the fairs | |
| Results of early marriage | |
| The betrothal ceremony | |
| Introduction of the wedding ring | |
| Marriage superstitions | |
| Marriage Customs | |
| The 'Memory of Zion' | |
| Wedding hymns and epithalamia | |
| The bridal procession | |
| The wreath | |
| Faces nuptiales | |
| Casting nuts and wheat at the bride | |
| Christians employed to provide wedding music on the Sabbath | |
| The Marshallik | |
| The marriage discourse | |
| The chuppa or bridal canopy | |
| Liturgical additions on the occasion of weddings | |
| The well of St. Keyne | |
| The wedding ceremony in the fifteenth century | |
| The Seven Benedictions | |
| Trades and Occupations | |
| Benjamin of Tudela and Jewish merchants in the twelfth century | |
| International trade | |
| Jews as commercial intermediaries between the Orient and Europe | |
| Jewish artisans: dyers, silk manufacturers, glass workers, makers of metal implements, printers, cloth manufacturers, dealers in wool | |
| Jerusalem in 1263 | |
| Agricultural pursuits | |
| Opposition of the medieval guilds | |
| The Bristol copper trade | |
| Sicilian Jews as makers of agricultural implements | |
| Rabbis as manual workers | |
| Trades and Occupations (continued) | |
| Jews prefer employment in which skilled labour is needed | |
| Dangerous occupations | |
| Jews as soldiers and sailors | |
| Navigation | |
| The East India Company | |
| Jews and Columbus | |
| A 'famous Jewish pirate' | |
| Jews and medicine | |
| A day in the life of Maimonides | |
| Usury | |
| Jews forced into the trade in money | |
| Jewish and Christian usurers | |
| A benevolent money-lender, Yechiel of Pisa | |
| Royal usurers | |
| Occupations of the Jews | p. 245 |
| The Jews and the Theatre | |
| Ancient antipathy to the theatre survives in the middle ages | |
| Music cultivated by medieval Rabbis | |
| Jewish jugglers and liontamers | |
| The stage Jew | |
| Jews forced to supply carnival sports | |
| Carnival plays | |
| The Jews in the Elizabethan drama | |
| Generosity to the Jewess on the stage | |
| Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Lessing | |
| The Purim-Play and the Drama in Hebrew | |
| Dramatic performances in the middle ages | |
| The growth of the Purim-play | |
| Joyous licence in the synagogue | |
| Earliest Purim-plays | |
| The drama in Hebrew and its importance in the social life of the Jews | |
| Amsterdam in the seventeenth century | |
| Moses Zacut and Moses Chayim Luzzatto | |
| Costume in Law and Fashion | |
| The ethics of dress | |
| The attire of women and the marriage settlements | |
| Covering the head in prayer | |
| Was there a Jewish costume? | |
| Varying costumes of the Jews in different countries | |
| Restrictions on Jewish dress in Mohammedan lands | |
| Eastern fashions | |
| Costumes in illuminated Hebrew MSS | |
| Amulets | |
| The Jewish Badge | |
| Extravagance in dress and the Italian sumptuary laws | |
| Pope Innocent III introduces the Jewish badge | |
| Motive of the innovation | |
| Shape, size, and colour of the badge in various countries | |
| Crescent and full moon | |
| Two tables of stone | |
| The Jewess' veil | |
| Effects of the badge combined with enforced life in the ghetto | |
| Deterioration in taste | |
| Private and Communal Charities. The Relief of the Poor | |
| The rights of poverty | |
| Itinerant mendicants | |
| Suppression of ostentatious pauperism | |
| Relief in kind, tamchui | |
| Charity and alms-giving | |
| The universality of benevolence | |
| Communal inn | |
| The kupah, or relief in money | |
| Collection and distribution of charitable funds | |
| Periodical assessments and voluntary contributions | |
| The tithe | |
| Circular letters granted in special cases | |
| Private and Communal Charity (continued). The Sick and the Captive | |
| Growth of benevolent societies | |
| Description of charitable societies in Rome | |
| Visiting the sick | |
| Etiquette in the sick-room | |
| Generosity of Jewish physicians | |
| Epidemics | |
| The Black Death | |
| Burial societies or holy leagues | |
| Ransoming captives | |
| Sufferings of Jewish travellers | |
| The Medieval Schools | |
| The Renaissance and the Jews | |
| The Talmudical scheme of education | |
| The education of girls | |
| Learned women | |
| Use of the vernacular in synagogue | |
| Translations of the prayers | |
| Ceremony of introducing the boy to school | |
| Course of instruction in the elementary schools | |
| The love for books | |
| Verse-writing in Spain | |
| Calligraphy | |
| The Scope of Education | |
| No learned caste in Judaism | |
| The study of Hebrew grammar | |
| The rise of jargons | |
| Vernacular poetry written by Jews | |
| A Jewish troubadour | |
| Latin | |
| Encyclopedic studies in Italy | |
| The German Talmudical schools | |
| Hispano-Jewish culture | |
| The curriculum of the thirteenth century | |
| Theology and philosophy | |
| Ernest Renan and the medieval Jews | |
| Medieval Pastimes and Indoor Amusements | |
| Sabbath recreations | |
| Limited opportunities for athletic exercises | |
| Hunting, riding, duelling, and the tourney | |
| Jews forbidden to bear arms | |
| Foot-races | |
| The games of women | |
| Children's games | |
| Dancing | |
| Separation of the sexes in amusements | |
| Intellectual games | |
| Purim-parodies | |
| Riddles | |
| Legendary lore | |
| Medieval Pastimes (continued). Chess and Cards | |
| Silver chessmen for the Sabbath | |
| Games of chance | |
| Chess as an antidote to gambling | |
| Card-playing in the fifteenth century | |
| Vows of abstinence | |
| Communal enactments against gambling | |
| Parental injunctions in ethical wills | |
| A Jewish card-painter | |
| Personal Relations Between Jews and Christians | |
| Actual relations different from the legal | |
| Anti-social character of the Church legislation | |
| Prejudice against the Jews not of popular origin | |
| Italian friendliness | |
| Dissent and the Jews | |
| Deleterious effect of the Protestant Reformation | |
| Bernard of Clairvaux, a champion of toleration | |
| Action of scholasticism | |
| Anti-social edicts against the Jews | |
| Jewish attitude towards Gentiles | |
| Personal Relations (continued). Literary Friendships | |
| The enlightened utterances of Jehuda Halevi and Maimonides | |
| Friendships between Jews and Christians in the tenth century | |
| Growth of the Odium theologicum | |
| Public theological controversies in the thirteenth century cause much bitterness | |
| Compulsory attendance of Jews at church on 'Holy Cross Day' | |
| Personal intimacies in Italy | |
| Donnolo and Abbot Nilus | |
| Anatoli and Michael Scotus | |
| Kalonymos and Robert of Anjou | |
| Dante and Immanuel of Rome | |
| Jewish teachers and Christian students | |
| Influence of the Cabala | |
| Activity of Elias Levita | |
| Levita and Cardinal Egidio | |
| Commercial partnerships between Jews and Christians | |
| Common amusements | |
| Restriction of social intercourse in the thirteenth century | |
| Heroes of toleration | |
| Index of Hebrew Authorities | p. 431 |
| General Index | p. 437 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
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