In This Land
Jewish Life and Legal Culture in Late Medieval Provence
Description
In This Land reveals the changes that Jewish communities across the county of Provence underwent during the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the social and cultural tensions that shaped their identity. Exploring legal responsa and other genres of rabbinic literature produced during this period - many of them previously unpublished - the book reveals the ways in which engagement with legal culture played a central role in the formation of medieval communal identity, providing both a language and a forum for the airing of grievances and the demarcation of social legitimacy.
Reviews
In This Land is a remarkable achievement by any standard. It is a clear and well-argued study of the inner workings of the Jewish communities of the medieval county of Provence, 'This Land,' in the idiom of the natives. The author addresses with precision and insight the legal system, social practices, cultural conflicts, and intellectual disputes arising out of the different origins of the Jewish inhabitants of the county. Yet, the study possesses a power beyond its substantive findings. It is a roadmap of how to deal creatively and intelligently with what at first sight appear to be almost intractable sources, namely, the contemporary Hebrew responsa, that body of precedents, advice, and critical discourse, in laconic and highly allusive form, on the proper operation of Jewish law. -- William Chester Jordan, Princeton University