Accounting for the commandments in medieval Judaism : : studies in law, philosophy, pietism, and kabbalah / / edited by Jeremy P. Brown, Marc Herman.

• Superior document: Études sur le judaïsme médiéval ; 86
• TeilnehmendeR: Brown, Jeremy P.; Herman, Marc, 1983-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Études sur le judaïsme médiéval ; 86.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (310 pages)

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism explores the discursive formation of the commandments as a generative matrix of Jewish thought and life in the posttalmudic period. Each study sheds light on how medieval Jews crafted the commandments out of theretofore underdetermined material. By systematizing, representing, or interrogating the amorphous category of commandment, medieval Jewish authors across both the Islamic and Christian spheres of influence sought to explain, justify, and characterize Israel's legal system, divine revelation, the cosmos, and even the divine order. This volume correlates bodies of knowledge-such as jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, pietism, and kabbalah-that are normally treated in isolation into a single conversation about a shared constitutional concern.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 The Commandments as a Discursive Nexus of Medieval Judaism -- Marc Herman and Jeremy P. Brown -- Case Studies in Individual Commandments -- 2 Dê Maḥsoro as the Key to Jewish Almsgiving: A Maimonidean Interpretive Innovation and Its Legal Afterlife to the Fifteenth Century -- Alyssa M. Gray -- 3 The Taqqanah of the Moredet in the Middle Ages -- Judith R. Baskin -- 4 An Early Kabbalistic Explanation of Temple Sacrifice: Text and Study -- Jonathan Dauber -- The Ramifications of Maimonides -- 5 Early Evaluation of Maimonides's Enumeration of the Commandments against the Background of the Eastern Maimonidean Controversy -- Marc Herman -- 6 Maimonides's Long Journey from Greek to Jewish Ethics -- Albert Dov Friedberg -- 7 The Reasons for the Commandments in Isaac Ibn Laṭīf's The Gate of Heaven (1238) -- Guadalupe González Diéguez -- Accounting for the Decalogue -- 8 The Ten Commandments Are Implanted in Human Minds: Abraham Ibn Ezra's Rational Approach to the Decalogue -- Mariano Gómez Aranda -- 9 Decoding the Decalogue: Theosophical Re-engraving of the Ten Commandments in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah -- Avishai Bar-Asher -- Discourses of Ṭaʿame ha-miṣvot : Tosafism, Rhineland Pietism, Egyptian Pietism, Kabbalah, Sabbatianism -- 10 Ṭaʿame ha-miṣvot in Medieval Ashkenaz -- Ephraim Kanarfogel -- 11 Pietism in the Law and the Law of Pietism: From Moses to Abraham Maimonides -- Elisha Russ-Fishbane -- 12 A Castilian Debate about the Aims and Limits of Theurgic Practice: Rationalizing Incest Taboos in the Zohar , Moses de León, and Joseph of Hamadan -- Leore Sachs-Shmueli -- 13 Ascesis, Hypernomianism, and the Excess of Lack: Semiotic Transfiguration of the Somatic -- Elliot R. Wolfson -- Select Bibliography -- Index.