Since Leopold Zunz's comments regarding the highly artistic form of the classic rabbinic homily, those involved in the critical study of midrash have concerned themselves with the structure of the derashah. Some nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars recognized that the individual pisqa'ot and parashiyyot of the homiletic midrashim contain a series of petiḥtot (sermonic proems), followed by interpretative comments upon the first few verses of the pericope texts. In addition, research into homiletic forms such as the peroration led other scholars closer to an understanding of the structural unity of the rabbinic homily.

The investigation of the history of the Jews in the Polish Commonwealth requires not only research on specific topics but broader reflection as well. The special place and role of the Jews in Polish society and the distinguishing characteristics of the Jewish experience in Poland need to be rescued from unwarranted generalizations which may result in misrepresentation. 1 On the broadest level, this essay is an initial step in the direction of the development of a conceptual framework for the study of this subject. The particular concern will be to compare some aspects of the experience of the Jews with that of some of the other non-Polish nonautochthonous groups in Poland from around 1500 to the beginning of the eighteenth century.

As far as we know, the rabbis were not well acquainted with Latin, but there are occasional examples in rabbinic literature of their ability to formulate or understand bilingual (Hebrew-Latin) puns. In Midrash Tanḥuma, for instance, there is a play on Latin corona/Hebrew qeren, and, according to an observation attributed to Yehoshua Guttman, at B.T. Ta‘anit 29a on Latin nasi (nasus)/Hebrew nasi. The talmudic anecdote quoted below can be best understood when we perceive the Latin wordplay on which it is built.

When the second generation proponents of Reform in Germany initiated a wave of intellectual, liturgical, and communal activity in the mid-1830s, Samson Raphael Hirsch immediately appeared on the scene as defender of the Jewish legal tradition. While Michael Creizenach's Schulchan Aruch was initiated in 1833 and Abraham Geiger introduced his Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift fuer juedische Theologie in 1835, Hirsch's first book, The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel, appeared as early as 1836, and his precocious response left little doubt that he was to be Orthodoxy's champion in the strife just beginning.

A minor historical movement which never assumes mass proportions, which arises and passes from public view in a brief period of time, and which leaves behind no residue of specific lasting effect would seem to possess only the most limited scholarly interest. Its intensive study can be justified only if such research points beyond its immediate subject to broader objective trends and subjective attitudes which it crystallizes or foreshadows. Yet even a small and transient grouping of similarly minded individuals may bring to focus external influences and motivational patterns which are considerably more widespread and which exist over a far longer period of time. This study will focus on a tiny, evanescent phenomenon: the first religiously radical grouping to arise within German Judaism. While not disregarding the specifics of its history, it will seek to indicate how its subject reflects currents and tendencies of considerably broader measure and of longer duration.

Samuel ben Judah Ibn Tibbon, translator of the Guide of the Perplexed and of other treatises of Maimonides, is in many ways also the first interpreter of Maimonides' philosophic teaching. The orientation of his interpretation of Maimonides' philosophy is already seen in his early writings—epistles, critical notes appended to his translations of the Guide, a philosophic glossary and the introductions to his translations. His interpretation was extensively developed, however, in his later and more comprehensive treatises—the Commentary on Ecclesiastes and Ma'amar yiqqavu hamayim. These treatises are explicitly devoted to philosophic exegesis of biblical verses, but are deeply impregnated with the proper interpretation of Maimonides' philosophy and with its problematics. Samuel Ibn Tibbon's writing had a decisive influence on Maimonidean thinkers throughout the thirteenth century, among whom may be numbered the authors of two comprehensive commentaries on the Guide, Moses ben Solomon of Salerno, and Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Hen.

Records of pronunciation from early stages of a language are studied both for their interest for its general historical development and also for the light they may throw on variations in spelling. Such records were, then as now, necessarily couched in rather specialized language, and, being of limited interest, tended to suffer at the hands of copyists. For both reasons they are likely to present problems to the modern scholar. The information on resh is no exception.

There is something of the ironic in the attempt to render into English the unique effects of the Hebrew poetry of Gabriel Preil. Indeed, it is hardly possible. The fact is that Preils artistic achievements, as well as his poetic charm, stem—at least in part—from his surprising mastery of the new Israeli vernacular. And surprising it is indeed, because geographically speaking, the American resident Gabriel Preil was twice removed from Israeli soil. Born in Estonia in 1911 and having spent his childhood in Lithuania, he escaped postwar Europe with his mother and migrated to the United States in 1922. New York has been his home ever since, and New England, his favorite rural landscape.

The question of Jewish usury is usually perceived in straightforward terms. The Church unilaterally opposed Jewish lending, and the kings did all they could to promote it. In the long run, however, the utility of Jewish lending diminished, and the forces of the Church were thus able to prevail. The kings, too, soon began to outlaw Jewish lending.

During the years immediately preceding World War I, German Zionism boldly reoriented its ideological and political program. New leaders drawn from the ranks of a younger generation now emphasized the critical necessity of their movement for the survival of German Jewry and rejected their predecessors view that German Zionism was primarily a philanthropic cause designed to aid imperiled East European Jews. The movement also increasingly criticized the tactics and policies of other Jewish groups, claiming that Zionists best knew how to solve the problems of German Jewry. The transformed Zionist Federation of Germany thereby abandoned its earlier posture of moderation and conciliation in favor of a radical and aggressive stance intended to revitalize the movement and challenge the incumbent leadership of German Jewry.