Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

See Emancipation

1. Primacy of Jewish jurisdictionEver since antiquity, the administration of justice according to the tenets of Judaic law has been considered an essential component of Jewish religio-cultural practice (Judaism). Jewish jurisdiction and Jewish law are crucial to an understanding of Jewish history, since Jewish law covered all areas of life, not just the categories of  issur ve-hetter (Hebr. “ritually prohibited and permitted”), but also the extensive area of  dine mammonot (Hebr. “financial matters”), which can only inadequately be translated as “ritual law” an…

1. Concept The field of Jewish languages includes all those languages spoken as a mother tongue by people who feel themselves as belonging to the Jewish people ( Judaism) either religiously, ethnically, or culturally. These languages include the two traditional languages of Judaism, Hebrew, “the language of God,” and ancient Aramaic [3. 86]. Hebrew, the earliest record of which is in the Hebrew Bible, was not widely used for verbal communication, but rather as a language of literature and cult in diglossic systems, initially with Aramaic, la…

For Halakha, see Judaic law. For the concept of Judenrecht, see Jews, laws concerning.

1. Definition and developmentIn its broadest sense, in the context of world literature,   Jewish literature denotes all works written by Jews and authors of Jewish background [9]; there have been repeated attempts, however, to limit and define Jewish literature on the basis of language, genres, themes, and authors, for polemic, apologetic, and academic purposes. Until the second half of the 18th century, Jewish literature was primarily religious in nature and hence deeply rooted in Judaism; with the Haskalah (the Jewish…

See Marriage

1. Definition The term Jewish medicine is ambiguous and can be defined differently, depending on one’s perspective. It can mean the guidelines governing medical practice laid down in Jewish religious law, the Halakhah (Judaic law). In a broader sense, Jewish medicine can be understood as any form of medicine practiced by Jewish healers based on their experiences and customs influenced by religious ideas. In this context, the term was already used in a pejorative sense at the beginning of the early mo…

1. Early examples: northern ItalyThe earliest attempt to introduce the spirit of the early modern period into synagogue music was undertaken in the early 16th century in northern Italy. The idea came from the Venetian rabbi and cantor Leon (Judah Aryeh) da Modena, who around 1605 organized and led choirs in Ferrara and later in a few other Jewish congregations. He encouraged his Jewish friend Salamone Rossi, a successful composer of madrigals and operas at the ducal court in Mantua, to write composi…

See Diaspora | Judaism | Theology

See Jewish press

1. DefinitionIn contrast to the anti-Semitic term Judenpresse (“Jew-press”), which referred pejoratively to the activity of Jews as journalists or publishers beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the term  Jewish press includes all those periodicals that (1) concern themselves overwhelmingly with Jewish themes, (2) are made possible by Jewish publishers and editors, and (3) are published for a primarily Jewish audience. This includes both Jewish newspapers and periodicals in the narrower sense and the numerous yea…

See Ghetto

See Jewish society | Jews, laws concerning

1. Basis and definitionWithout a state of their own since antiquity, Jews in early modern Europe were the largest and most important religious and ethnic minority. Starting in Asia Minor, their areas of settlement stretched west and north through the North African and European Mediterranean region to Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, south as far as Yemen and Ethiopia, and east through Iraq and Persia as far as India, which they had already reached in the high Middle Ages. Jews also arrived on …

See Judaism | Wissenschaft des Judentums

1. OriginsThe theater is not traditionally a Jewish art form, because the rabbinic authorities of the postbiblical period opposed ancient pagan (Hellenistic and Roman) institutions like theaters, amphitheaters, stadia, circuses, and hippodromes. They associated them with idolatry and obscene rites and therefore forbade Jewish men to visit them, while Jewish women were not allowed in any case to enter public places of this nature, as the Mishnah states. In ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles, this prohi…

See Ashkenazim | Jewish society | Judaism | Sephardim

1. Definition and scopeA general distinction is drawn between Judaic law (the legal norms based on the Halacha; i.e. law within the Jewish community) and laws concerning Jews, which comprises the norms that are intended to regulate relations between Jews and their non-Jewish (Christian, Muslim) environment. Both bodies of law might refer to one another: laws concerning Jews were influenced by halachic rules, and such laws might in turn be cited to interpret Judaic laws, thus being incorporated into…

1. Terminology 1.1. Persecutions Persecutions here means anti-Jewish violence affecting a larger community, exceeding the scale of everyday antisemitism. Persecutions were “measures undertaken by governments (Sovereign power) against Jews as a group … that were shaped by collective notions and exceeded the usual measure of theoretically required anti-Jewish regulations” [8]. While the term  antisemitism refers to routine hostility toward Jews on the part of the Christian population,  persecutions identifies its most extreme excesses; persecutions differ from pogroms, which – unlike expulsions and persecutions – aimed at the total annihila…