""Sefer Hasidim"" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe

Ivan G. Marcus

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English

University of Pennsylvania Press
06 July 2018

History of religion; Judaism: sacred texts; Criticism & exegesis of sacred texts

Series: Jewish Culture and Contexts

Composed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or ""Book of the Pietists,"" is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah's messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries.

In ""Sefer Hasidim"" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjunctive, yet self-contained, segments, which were then combined into multiple alternative versions, each equally authoritative. While Sefer Hasidim offers the clearest example of this model of composition, Marcus argues that it was not unique: the production of Ashkenazic books in small and easily rearranged paragraphs is a literary and cultural phenomenon quite distinct from anything practiced by the Christian authors of northern Europe or the Sephardic Jews of the south. According to Marcus, Judah, in authoring Sefer Hasidim in this manner, not only resisted Greco-Roman influences on Ashkenazic literary form but also extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture.

By: Ivan G. Marcus
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780812250091
ISBN 10: 0812250095
Series: Jewish Culture and Contexts
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 06 July 2018
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Ivan G. Marcus is the Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History at Yale University. He is author of several books, including Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany.

Reviews for ""Sefer Hasidim"" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe

Marcus's groundbreaking and inspiring book about Sefer Hasidim is highly recommended for every scholar or student who is interested in this specific text and also in the more general concept of an 'open book' not only in Ashkenazic literature. -European Journal of Jewish Studies Ivan G. Marcus lays out in a new way how Sefer Hasidim develops and functions as an Ashkenazic book. The summary, assessment, and synthesis of prior research he presents is enlightening and helpful. -Ephraim Kanarfogel, Yeshiva University