Emissaries from the Holy Land : the Sephardic diaspora and the practice of pan-Judaism in the eighteenth century / Matthias B. Lehmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lehmann, Matthias B., 1970- author.

Series:

Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sephardim--History--18th century.

Sephardim.

Jewish diaspora--History--18th century.

Jewish diaspora.

Jews--Identity--History--18th century.

Jews.

Jews--Palestine--Charities--History--18th century.

Jews--Charities.

Jews--Identity.

Charities.

History.

Middle East--Palestine.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 340 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

For Jews In Every Corner of The World, the Holy Land has always been central. But that conviction was put to the rest in the eighteenth century when Jewish leaders in Palestine and their allies in Istanbul sent rabbinic emissaries on global fundraising missions, From the shores of the Mediterranean to the port cities of the Atlantic seaboard, from the Caribbean to India, these emissaries solicited donations for the impoverished communities of the ancient Jewish homeland. Emissaries from the Holy Land explores how this eighteenth-century philanthropic network was organized and how relations of trust and solidarity were built across vast geographic distances. It looks at how the emissaries and their supporters understood the relationship between the Jewish diaspora and the Land of Israel, and it shows how cross-cultural encounters and competing claims for financial support involving Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and North African emissaries and communities contributed to the transformation of Jewish identity from 1720 to 1820. Solidarity among Jews and the centrality of the Holy Land in traditional Jewish society are often taken for granted, but Matthias Lehmann Challenges such assumption, Based on original archival research as Well as multiple little-Known and rarely studied sources, Emissaries from the Holy Land offers a fresh perspective on early modern Jewish society and culture and the relationship between the Jewish diaspora and Palestine in the eighteenth century. Book jacket.

Contents:

Network of beneficence : Istanbul, Jerusalem, and the philanthropic network

Agents of philanthropy : emissaries from the Holy Land and the communities of the diaspora

Ideological foundations

Solidarity contested : ethnic division and the quest for unity

End of an era : the transformation of the philanthropic network in the nineteenth century

Epilogue : pan-Judaism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804789653

0804789657

OCLC:

879642476