Full Description
This study portrays a man and an age. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (1578-1654), author of the famous Mishnah commentary Tosafot yom tov, was a major talmudist, a disciple of the legendary Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, and himself the distinguished chief rabbi of Prague and Cracow. The time in which he lived began as a 'golden age' for the Jews of Prague and the Jews of Poland, an age of prosperity and the rise of Jewish mysticism. During Heller's lifetime, however, the golden age changed to darkness, and prosperity gave way to war, persecution, plague, and massacres. It was the end of the Middle Ages, the last generation before Spinoza and Shabbetai Zevi. Scholar, preacher, religious and communal leader, Heller embodied a religious and cultural ideal; he was the very model of a seventeenth-century rabbi. Born in Germany, he moved from one end of the world of Ashkenazi Jewry to the other, first to Prague, and then to Poland and the Ukraine. His life was enmeshed in a web of family ties, and bounded by complex rules of class and religion.His writing reflects not only the full heritage of medieval Jewish thought and its crystallization in the seventeenth century, but also the time and place in which he lived. In many ways, he exemplified his age, its achievements, and its limitations. Carefully researched and well written, Joseph Davis's work is the definitive biography of Heller. He presents a richly detailed study of Heller's worldview, his conception of Judaism, of the world around him, and of himself within it: the seventeenth century seen through seventeenth-century eyes. Heller was eyewitness to momentous, epoch-making events: the beginning of the Thirty Years' War and the massacres of 1648. He lived through a time of tumultuous change. Texts such as the sermon in which Heller responded to the new astronomy of Brahe and Kepler, or a poem on the massacres of 1648 in which he enlarged the capacity of Hebrew poetry to express horror are significant in the larger context of Jewish and European history. Heller's world-view was not static or motionless.His world changed greatly during his lifetime, and his views of it likewise changed greatly over the fifty years from his first writings to his last, from youth to middle age to old age. His personal circumstances also contributed to this: the experience of betrayal, arrest, imprisonment, the death of his children, and other misfortunes led him to wrestle with such questions as the differences between Jews and non-Jews and the meaning of suffering. Davis weaves these developments succinctly into a fascinating narrative that does full justice both to Heller and the momentous events he experienced.
Contents
List of abbreviations Introduction A Rabbinic Life * The Six Pillars * Philosophy and Mysticism in Ashkenazi Culture * Social Rabbis * The Politics of Seventeenth-Century Jews * Persecutions and Plagues * Satan in Goray Part I The Ladder of Ascension, 1578-1617 1The Orphan The Orphan * Wallerstein, 1578 * Marriage in a Prominent Family * The Maharal of Prague * The New Curriculum * The Examination of the World 2The Exile of a Philosopher The Flowering of Philosophical Study among Ashkenazi Jews * Joseph ben Isaac and Givat haMoreh * 'A dwarf on the Shoulders of a Giant' * The Plague of 1611 * The Exile of a Philosopher 3Two Kabbalists Isaiah Horowitz and the 'Repudiation of Philosophy' * Heller as Kabbalist * On Magic, Magidim, and the Individual Self * On Esotericism, Non-Kabbalistic Judaism, and the Purposes of Prayer * In Defence of Philosophy 4 Tosafot Yom Tov The Maharal and the Revival of the Mishnah * On Rashi, Tosafot, and the Seventy Faces of Torah * The Exegetical Experience * Letter to Worms, 1616 5 Jews and Gentiles The Nikolsburg Wine Controversy of 1616 * On Non-Jewish Bread and Non-Jewish Books * On Humanizing the Non-Jews * Against Trinitarianism, 1619 * On Unity Part II The Trial, 1618-1630 6Prague in Wartime The Defenestration of Prague, 1618 * Letter to Vienna, 1619 * Fears * Prague, 1620: Habsburg Loyalist * On Providence and Miracles *Jacob Bassevi * The Plague of 1625 7The Chief Rabbi 'Who are the Kings? The Rabbis * Rabbinic Activism and Educational Reform * 'Delights of the King' * Against the Shulhan arukh * On Humility * Interpretations and Decisions * The Constitutions of the Jews * The Title Page * Letter to Frankfurt, 1628 8The Trial The Arrest * In the Prison of Vienna * Deliverance * Explanations * On Politics * Again on Non-Jews * A Day of Remembrance Part III Change and Defeat, 1631-1654 9The Sermon From Prague to Poland * 'The Lessening of the Moon' * Midrashic Natural History * On the New Astronomy * On Change * The Maharal and the Illusion of Self * The Acceptance of Suffering 10 Attacks and Retreats To the Edge of Europe * Again on the Shulhan arukh * On Honour * The Ban on the Purchase of Rabbinic Office * Permission to Publish Kabbalah 11 A Rabbi's Autobiography The Coronation, 1644 * Deliverance Narrative and Autobiography * On Silence * Family * On Himself 12The Massacres of 1648 The Twentieth Day of Sivan * Fasting and Silence * Two Kinds of Messianism * Demonizing the Cossacks * The Absence of the King * 'You Have Become a Plague' * Letter to Checiny, 1651 Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller's Extant Works and Writings Bibliography Index
