H-German has a review of two new books on Medieval European Jewry. The first book is Susan L. Einbinder, No Place of Rest: Jewish Literature, Expulsion, and the Memory of Medieval France. The second book is David Joshua Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250. I finally arrived at [...]
Over at Gene Expression you can read an understandable discussion with neat graphics about the genetic background of Ashkenazi Jews. Some of the conclusions:
1) Jewish populations do have a common ancestral affinity.
2) But, that affinity is complemented by admixture with the populations amongst whom the Diaspora settled.
3) There is a suggestion that in the [...]
Whether Ashkenazim should continue to observe the prohibition of eating kitniyot on Passover has been discussed ad nauseam for quite some time. IMHO, do whatever you want and get over it. Personally, I eat any kitniyot which were not known in Ashkenaz during the 12-13th centuries, e.g. corn, when this custom took root and [...]
A new book by David Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250
Reconstructing Ashkenaz shows that, contrary to traditional accounts, the Jews of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages were not a society of saints and martyrs. David Malkiel offers provocative revisions of commonly held interpretations of Jewish martyrdom in the First [...]
In Haaretz there is a review of Haym Soloveitchik’s new book Ha-Yayin Bimei Ha-Beinayim,
Soloveitchik’s book is a study of the subject of yayin nesekh (or “idolatrous wine,” that is, wine that has been touched by gentiles and is therefore forbidden to Jews) as it affected the day-to-day lives of medieval German Jewry. In the [...]
A Yiddish word which is known by many Jews is davenen,[1] “pray”, or as many English-speaking Jews says, “to daven“. The history of Yiddish is very interesting, and to show how difficult the question is, below are some theories as to the etymology of davenen. [2]
1. From the Hebrew daf, “a leaf of a [...]
According to the JTA,
Jewish gravestones from as early as the 12th century were found in southwest Germany.
Some 20 Jewish gravestones were found during excavations for planned housing construction
next to the wall of the old Jewish cemetery in the community of Mainz. The stones are among the oldest ever found in the Rheinland-Pfalz region, experts said.
Construction [...]
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