The Rabbi and the Rebels: A Pamphlet on the Ḥerem by Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca
Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, the head rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, published a pamphlet in 1680 that addressed the laws of the herem. This Exhortation, as he called it, urged his readers to restore a general sense of gravity to the ban, arguing more specifically that...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
2014
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
Year: 2014, Volume: 104, Issue: 2, Pages: 171-191 |
| Further subjects: | B
Amsterdam
B lay leadership B Excommunication B Politics B Herem B Rabbis B kahal B Early Modern B rabbinic authority B Isaac Aboab da Fonseca |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, the head rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, published a pamphlet in 1680 that addressed the laws of the herem. This Exhortation, as he called it, urged his readers to restore a general sense of gravity to the ban, arguing more specifically that lay leaders could legally impose a ban without a rabbi’s approval, and that the herem was deeply connected to the foundations of communal authority, which he viewed as inviolable. His halakhic discussion engaged with a series of claims made by his unnamed interlocutors, who apparently rejected the authority of the Mahamad on practical and theoretical grounds. Aboab’s previously unstudied work reveals a new, ideological dimension of a series of disputes that are known to have disturbed this Sephardi community in the 1670s, and complicates the widely held view that the early modern period was characterized by a decline in rabbinic authority alongside the rise of strongly lay-led communities. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/jqr.2014.0011 |