Toleration within Judaism
About this ebook
Substantial introductory chapters lay out the issues and provide an extensive survey of cases of toleration throughout the past two thousand years, outlining possible structural reasons for it. The eight chapters that follow each take a specific case of toleration within Judaism, attempting to explain it in light of the models outlined in the Introduction. Presented in chronological order, the cases have been selected to reflect a spectrum of responses, from grudging forbearance to enthusiastic welcome of difference. Covering both practice and theology, each case is presented in depth, with full documentation. The Conclusion provides an overview of the patterns of tolerance that have emerged and discusses the implications for writing the history of Judaism as a narrative more complex than either the tracing of a linear progression from the Bible to the present, with variations presented as deviations, or as a model of overlapping ‘Judaisms’.
This innovative volume sheds light on an important and overlooked aspect of the history of Judaism and should have broad appeal, not only for students and scholars of Judaism but for students of religious studies more generally.
About the author
Martin Goodman is Professor of Jewish Studies in the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Wolfson College, and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Among his books on Jewish history are Rome and Jerusalem (2007) and Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays (2007).
Joseph E. David is Senior Lecturer in Law and Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Sapir Academic College. He has been a visiting professor at Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University, and a faculty member at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Family and the Political: On Belonging and Responsibility in a Liberal Society' (2012) and 'Between Logos and Nomos: Law and Theology in Medieval Jewish Thought' (forthcoming).
Corinna R. Kaiser has taught at the universities of Düsseldorf, Giessen, and Rutgers, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Oxford. She recently returned to Düsseldorf as a lecturer. She specializes in the cultural, ritual, and media history of the Jews in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Simon Levis Sullam is Assistant Professor of Modern History at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice. He has held visiting positions at Berkeley, at the European University Institute, and at the University of Oxford. His publications on Jewish history include a modern history of the Jews of Venice ('Una Comunità Immaginata', 2001) and (as co-editor) the multi-volume 'Storia della Shoah' (2006-10).
