The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 - Softcover

Shear, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107404991 ISBN 13: 9781107404991

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Judah Halevi’s Book of the Kuzari is a defense of Judaism that has enjoyed an almost continuous transmission since its composition in the twelfth century. By surveying the activities of readers, commentators, copyists, and printers for more than 700 years, Adam Shear examines the ways that the Kuzari became a classic of Jewish thought. Today, the Kuzari is usually understood as the major statement of an anti-rationalist and ethnocentric approach to Judaism and is often contrasted with the rationalism and universalism of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. But this conception must be seen as a modern construction, and the reception history of the Kuzari demonstrates that many earlier readers of the work understood it as offering a way toward reconciling reason and faith and of negotiating between particularism and universalism.

About this title

Book Description

Adam Shear examines the ways that the twelfth-century Book of the Kuzari became a classic of Jewish thought. Contrary to modern perceptions, Shear shows that it was often read as a way toward reconciling reason and faith and of negotiating between particularism and universalism.

About the Author

Adam Shear teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is editor of the English edition of The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim (2006) and is currently co-editing a volume (with Joseph Hacker) on the history of the early modern Jewish book.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107404991
• ISBN 13: 9781107404991
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 402