Jewish Education and Learning
In honour of Dr David Patterson on the occasion of his seventieth birthday
Jewish Education and Learning : published in honour of Dr David Patterson on the occasion of his seventieth birthday /
edited by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. -- Chur, Switzerland : Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994.
321 pages.
This volume, dedicated to Dr David Patterson, founding President of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, takes as its theme Jewish education and learning throughout the ages. But
it is the 'Academy' - interpreted here to mean an institution of Judaic
scholarship - which dominates this collection of essays. For almost three
thousand years centres of Jewish learning have flourished in many parts of the
world. This volume discusses these institutions from biblical times to the
present. From the time of the Mishnaic Academy at Yavneh, established in the
first century CE, the academies were more than schools of higher religious
education. They incorporated rational analysis of the scriptures, the natural
sciences and other secular studies. Some of the most celebrated academies, such
as those in Cairo and Tunisia, and later in the Iberian Peninsula were of a very
high intellectual order, sometimes superior to the great Christian universities.
It was at these institutions that the great Jewish legal and literary works were
written and completed.
This collection of essays has been written by outstanding
scholars who have been associated with David Patterson and the Oxford Centre.
the essays explore the nature and function of the 'Jewish Academies' in the
broadest sense, the leading personalities associated with them and their social,
cultural and moral effect on the Jewish communities of their day.
Table of contents:
Contents (pp. v-vi)
Isaiah Berlin: Foreword (p. vii)
Notes on contributors (pp. ix-xiii)
Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt: Introduction (pp.
xv-xvi)
Tudor Parfitt: Smolenskin and the revival of Hebrew education
(pp. 1-8)
Harold Fisch: Bar-Ilan University - a question of identity
(pp. 9-22)
Calum M. Carmichael: Ancient academic activity and the origin of the
Pentateuch (pp. 23-35)
Ezra Spicehandler: Hebrew language and literature at The Hebrew Union
College--Jewish Institute of Religion 1876-1930 (pp. 37-59)
Tova Cohen: The Maskil as Lamdan : the influence of Jewish Education on
Haskalah writing techniques (pp. 61-73)
Dovid Katz: Notions of Yiddish (pp. 75-91)
Bernard S. Jackson: The teaching of Jewish Law in British universities
(pp. 93-113)
Nicholas de Lange: Jewish education in the Byzantine Empire in the
twelfth century (pp. 115-128)
Yehuda Friedlander: The controversy between
M.L. Lilienblum and the world of the Yeshivot as
depicted in Mishnat Elisha Ben Avuyah (1878) (pp.
143-156)
Noah Lucas: Religious education in Israel : a perspective
(pp. 157-165)
Martin Goodman: Jewish attitudes to Greek culture in the period of the
Second Temple (pp. 167-174)
Alice and Roy Eckardt: The content of Jewish education and its
responsibility within the Jewish-Christian encounter (pp.
175-194)
Edward Ullendorff: The Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des
Judentums : Marginalia--Personalities--Reminiscences (pp.
195-202)
Terry Fenton: Chaos in the Bible? Tohu vavohu (pp.
203-220)
A. Wasserstein: Greek language and philosophy in the early Rabbinic
academies (pp. 221-231)
David Aberbach: Aggadah and childhood imagination in the works of
Mendele, Bialik and
Agnon (pp. 233-241)
Jewish Education and Learning : published in honour of Dr David Patterson on the occasion of his seventieth birthday /
edited by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. -- Chur, Switzerland : Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994.