Mediterranean Society, An Abridgment in One Volume / Goitein/Lassner; ed. by S. D. Goitein, Jacob Lassner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goitein/Lassner, Author.

Contributor:

Goitein, S. D., Editor.

Lassner, Jacob, Editor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (528 p.) : 1 b/w photograph, 1 map

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2001]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

S. D. Goitein's magisterial five-volume work on Jewish communities in the medieval Mediterranean world offers an unparalleled view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. Living under Muslim rule, the Jews became increasingly urbanized and played a significant part in an expanding world economy. As major actors in the flourishing intellectual life of the period, they forged much of what constitutes traditional Judaism today and served as a conduit of Islamic learning to the Christian West.Goitein's masterpiece is now abridged and reworked by Jacob Lassner in a single volume that captures the essential narratives and contexts of the original. To understand the value of this distillation, we need to picture the remarkable, all-but-impenetrable cache of unique letters and documents found by accident in a geniza, or repository of sacred writings, in Old Cairo. These materials, unlike historical chronicles and literary texts of the time, represent the living experiences of people in a wide variety of settings throughout the entire Mediterranean and stretching as far east as the Indian subcontinent.Goitein explored and interpreted these texts as no other scholar had. Lassner, in turn, makes Goitein's findings available to a wide audience and then moves on to raise a host of new and tantalizing questions about the Jews of the Geniza and the relationship of their community to the hegemonic Muslim society.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Author's Note

Map: The Mediterranean in the eleventh century

Introduction

Part I: COMMUNAL ORGANIZATION

1. Jewish Ecumenical and Territorial Authorities

2. The Local Community

3. Community Officials

4. The Social Services

5. Houses of Worship

6. Jews and the Muslim State as Reflected in the Geniza

7. A Social Being

8. Social Structure

9. Education and the Professional Class

10. Interfaith Relations

11. Communal Jurisdiction

Part II: The Family and Its Values

12. The House of the Father

13. Marriage

14. The "House" or Nuclear Family

15. The World of Women

Addendum

General Index

Index of Scriptural Citations

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 09. Dez 2023)

ISBN:

0-520-35422-2

OCLC:

1414455909