Crossing the Jabbok: Illness and Death in Askenazi Judaism in Sixteenth - through Nineteenth-Century Prague

Book Description
To date, remarkably little research attention has been paid to the development of Jewish beliefs and rituals about illness and death. Crossing the Jabbok presents an illuminating study of such views and practices among Ashkenazi Jews (1500s-1800s) and is one of the first works to apply history of mentalits methods to a topic in Jewish cultural studies. Focusing on Prague, then the center of Central and Western European Jewry, the author draws on a rich array of materials to explore what was distinctively Jewish about the approach of Jews to sickness and dying. Her discoveries shed new light on the institution of the hevra kaddisha, or burial society, and many existing customs.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


About the Author
Sylvie-Anne Goldberg is Associate Professor at the Center for Historical Research, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Carol Cosman is a freelance translator.


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In Crossing the Jabbok, Sylvie-Anne Goldberg presents an ambitious study of the views of sickness and death among Ashkenazi Jews from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Focusing on Prague, in those years the center of Central and Western European Jewry, Goldberg describes the evolution of attitudes, beliefs, and practices concerning illness and death among Ashkenazi Jews throughout the German lands. Goldberg draws on a rich array of materials - including secular and religious texts, community records and charters, the Halakhah, writings of famous rabbis, and accounts of Jewish-Christian interrelations - to explore that culture. In particular, she seeks to discover the distinctively Jewish aspects of customs and beliefs surrounding illness and dying.


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