When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected corpus of Hebrew poetry, the laments reflecting the specific conditions of Jewish life in northern France. The poems offer insight into everyday life and into ...
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When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected corpus of Hebrew poetry, the laments reflecting the specific conditions of Jewish life in northern France. The poems offer insight into everyday life and into the ways medieval French Jews responded to persecution. They also suggest that poetry was used to encourage resistance to intensifying pressures to convert. The educated Jewish elite in northern France was highly acculturated. Their poetry--particularly that emerging from the innovative Tosafist schools--reflects their engagement with the vernacular renaissance unfolding around them, as well as conscious and unconscious absorption of Christian popular beliefs and hagiographical conventions. At the same time, their extraordinary poems signal an increasingly harsh repudiation of Christianity's sacred symbols and beliefs. They reveal a complex relationship to Christian culture as Jews internalized elements of medieval culture even while expressing a powerful revulsion against the forms and beliefs of Christian life. This gracefully written study crosses traditional boundaries of history and literature and of Jewish and general medieval scholarship. Focusing on specific incidents of persecution and the literary commemorations they produced, it offers unique insights into the historical conditions in which these poems were written and performed.
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Add this copy of Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in to cart. $57.00, very good condition, Sold by Moe's Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Princeton University Press.
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Very good in Very good jacket. Inside jacket is lightly foxed along top edge. Top edge of spine is lightly bumped, but binding is tight. Inside pages are clean and unmarked.
Add this copy of Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in to cart. $57.00, like new condition, Sold by Maxwell's House of Books rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from La Mesa, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Princeton University Press.
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Fine in Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall A beautiful crisp clean hardcover copy in fine condition. DJ in fine condition and in protective mylar cover.
Add this copy of Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in to cart. $100.79, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Princeton University Press.
Add this copy of Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in to cart. $106.70, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2002 by Princeton University Press.
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New. Print on demand Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 232 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern, 8.
Add this copy of Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in to cart. $205.51, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Princeton University Press.
