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CONTENTS
Lily
Montagu was the founder of Liberal Judaism in England. Because of
Montagu’s groundbreaking proto-feminist efforts women in Liberal Judaism
can become rabbis, be called up to read the Torah, they are equal in
divorce law, they can study the sacred texts, they can form a minyan,
and can assume communal and religious positions of authority over men.
Montagu was an author, theologian, and social worker; she was the
driving force behind the development of Liberal Judaism. However, this
biographical overview does not match up with the extant historiography
that has instead preferred to focus on the male leaders of the Liberal
movement to the extent that Montagu’s intellectual and theological
contribution has been marginalized and even completely ignored. In this
paper we will see through analysis of rarely seen literary material
another aspect of the gendered history of fin-de- siècle Anglo-Jewry
that would otherwise be forgotten; even more, we will see in Montagu’s
essays, monographs, and novels some of the English foundations of
contemporary Jewish feminist theology. In the process, the biography and
memory of Lily Montagu will be restored to its rightful place.
2. Aron C. Sterk, Latino-Romaniotes: The Continuity of Jewish Communities in the Western Diaspora, 400–700 CE
The
fate of Jewish communities in the western Diaspora in the period
between the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the
efflorescence of Jewish learning and culture in ninth-century Spain and
tenth-century France and Germany has been neglected by both Jewish and
generalist historians. It has been assumed that late antique communities
outside ancient centres like the city of Rome and the south of Italy
were relatively recent and the period saw a contraction and withdrawal
of Jewish communities to the Mediterranean littoral until they were
revitalised by Jews from the Islamic south and east. More recently it
has been suggested that western Jews were cut off from Hebrew language
and Halakhah and therefore developed as purely ‘biblical’ Jews,
an easy prey to Christian proselytism. However, the late antique and
early medieval periods have recently been reassessed and are now seen as
a period of continuity. There is evidence that Jewish communities were
more extensive and longer established than previously assumed, and that
Jews in the west continued to maintain a vital contact with the east and
had access to Hebrew learning, Hebrew scrolls and oral tradition. The
identification of a previously unknown Latin Jewish manuscript (the
Letter of Annas to Seneca) and the discovery of Jewish settlements in
Roman Gaul suggest that evidence from this period has been neglected or
overlooked and that the period needs reassessment as a period that
provided the demographic and cultural continuity that the later medieval
community built upon; an indigenous Latin-speaking ‘Romaniote’
community that underlay the later communities of Sepharad, Tzarfat and
Ashkenaz.
3. Bernard S. Jackson, Why the name New TESTAMENT?
Both
theology and philology suggest that the title of the Christian
scriptures should have been “The New Covenant” rather than “The New
Testament”.1 Why then did the Church Fathers from at least Tertullian in
the 2nd century adopt novum testamentum? Was it simply a confusion of the LXX (covenant) and koine (a will) meanings of diathēkē (διαθηκη)?
I first review the translation history and the methodological issues it
raises (section 1) and then turn to two very different theological
approaches to the question (section 2): I reject the attempt of Behm to
impose (a version of) the koine meaning (in his view, as a unilateral disposition) on the LXX (and subsequent literature, and even extending back to berit
in the Hebrew Bible) as both theologically and legally inappropriate.
Far preferable is the more recent account of Schenker, who sees the use
of diatithēmi and diathēkē in reference to meta tēn teleutēn
transactions as having been chosen as appropriate to the terms of God’s
covenant regarding the land and its use, and rightly shows the range of
succession institutions to which this terminology could be applied.
Both Behm and Schenker need to take positions on the forms of succession
in vogue at the relevant periods (LXX and NT) in the Hellenistic and
Jewish worlds. In section 3, I summarise the current state of knowledge
and debate in legal historical studies, stressing the danger of assuming
the features of modern “wills”, and noting the close relationship to
political alliance (cf. covenant) in the “will” of the 2nd cent. BCE
Ptolemy Neoteros of Cyrene. More generally, I argue that there is a
connection between covenant and inheritance in the Hebrew Bible,
including (but not restricted to) “spiritual inheritance” (section 4);
that this was sharpened in the “Testament” genre of 2nd commonwealth
(pseudepigraphical) literature, developing a model found already in the
Hebrew Bible (section 5); that two New Testament texts explicitly
associate covenant and (by analogy) testament (section 6); and finally
that some aspects of the Roman testamentum (even more than the
Jewish and Hellenistic forms of will) may well have proved theologically
appealing to Tertullian, resulting in his adoption of the terminology
of testamentum vetus and novum (section 7). In particular, the Roman testamentum took effect in its entirety only on death and automatically revoked any earlier will.
4. Michael Rand, An Aramaic Dispute Between the Months by Sahlan Ben Avraham
4. Michael Rand, An Aramaic Dispute Between the Months by Sahlan Ben Avraham
The
article offers an overview of the corpus of poetic disputes between the
months com- posed in Aramaic, together with a critical edition of one
such poem, איתחברו ירחי שתא by Sahlan ben Avraham (Fustat, 11th
century). The critical edition is accompanied by translations of the
poem into Hebrew and English. Part of the text given in the critical
edition is based on a copy found in a Genizah document copied in the
13th century by Yedutun Ha-Levi, now known as סדר פוסטאט א. The history
of publication of this document is reviewed, and a description of its
remaining fragments (including a new fragment identified as part of the
present edition) is given.
