摘录

Preface This volume of important essays emerged from the yearlong deliberations of a talented group of scholars invited in 2003-4 to what is now the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Their charge was to explore the theme "Prescriptive Traditions and Lived Experience in the Jewish Religion: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives." As always, the year was devoted to interdisciplinary scholarship of the highest order, to the rigorous discussion of differing academic perspectives, and to a breaking down of the barriers set up by specialized training and circumscribed fields of study. In this instance, historians with specialties ranging from antiquity to the present were partnered with anthropologists, folklorists, and sociologists, for an invigorating conversation about how their methods of scholarly inquiry could intermesh. How might a focus on texts complement or clash with a focus based on lived experience? And how might this fascinating dialectic play out in the traditionally text-oriented fields of Jewish studies? The exciting results of much of this conversation are now before the reader. It would not be an exaggeration to consider the volume at hand as field-defining, even as expanding and moving Jewish studies into a new era and into a new self-perception of what constitutes Jewish learning. It would also not be an exaggeration to say that just as the conversations upon which it was based were not easy to stage, this volume was not easy to produce. It is one thing to encourage a dialogue between historians and anthropologists; it is quite another to reach a consensus and a common language about the subject of these inquiries. The credit for this achievement rests in the prodigious efforts of the volume's three editors: Ra'anan Boustan, a scholar of rabbinic literature and ancient Jewish history; Marina Rustow, a historian of medieval Jewish culture and society; and Oren Kosansky, an anthropologist who works on Jewish communities in Muslim North Africa. Besides their efforts to shape a coherent volume, their introduction stands as a bold and thoughtful statement about their respective disciplines and places within the study of Jewish culture and society. I wish to thank these three individuals for their achievement; I also wish to thank the other contributors to this volume as well as the fellows who are not represented in the book but who contributed significantly to the intellectual community from which it has emerged. David B. Ruderman Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History Ella Darivoff Director, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Excerpted from Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.