Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgments

Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews
by David Biale

Introduction
by David Biale

ONE:
Merchants and Intellectuals, Rabbis and Poets: Judeo-Arabic Culture in the Golden Age of Islam
by Raymond P. Scheindlin

TWO:
A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformations of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia
by Benjamin R. Gampel

THREE:
A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz
by Ivan G.Marcus

FOUR:
Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth
by Moshe Rosman

FIVE:
Families and Their Fortunes: The Jews of Early Modern Italy
by Elliott Horowitz

SIX:
Bom Judesmo: The Western Sephardic Diaspora
by Yosef Kaplan

SEVEN:
Childbirth and Magic: Jewish Folklore and Material Culture
by Shalom Sabar

Conclusion
by David Biale • 421

Index

About the Author

David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis.

Reviews

“Lay readers already hooked on Jewish history will be endlessly fascinated, and those seeking a solid state-of-the art introduction to the field will find it here, with ample reference to other, more specialized or canonical works. . . One of the most nourishing Jewish books we've encountered in some time. . . . Wonderful.” —The Jerusalem Report

“The writers revel in the new vistas opened by a cultural approach, lavishly providing us, in generous detail, with descriptions of a Jewish world more various than historians have allowed us to glimpse.” —Tikkun

“Biale has gathered a stellar international group of scholars around the grand theme of Jewish cultural history. The tastes of many different intellectual palates will find various satisfactions here.” —Jewish Quarterly Review