Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Irano-Judaica

  • Zoroastrianism in the Levant

    Abouzayd, Shafiq (ed.). 2014. Zoroastrianism in the Levant: Proceedings of conferences held in 2010 & 2012. ARAM 26(1).

    Table of contents:

    Patricia Crone: “Pre-existence in Iran: “Zoroastrians, ex-Christians Mu‘tazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies”

    Oktor Skjærvø & Yaakov Elman: “Concepts of pollution in late Sasanian Iran. Does pollution need stairs, and dose it fill space?”

    Maria Macuch: “The case against Mār Abā, the Catholicos, in the light of Sasanian law”

    Sara Kuehn: “The dragon fighter: The influence of Zoroastrian ideas on Judaeo-Christian and Islamic iconography”

    Geoffrey Herman: “Like a slave before his master: A Persian gesture of deference in Sasanian, Jewish, and Christian sources”

    Michał Gawlikowski: “Zoroastrian echoes in the Mithraeum at Hawarte, Syria”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “Zoroastrian apocalyptic and Hellenistic political propaganda”

    Dan D.Y. Shapira: “Pahlavi Fire, Bundahishn 18”

    Matteo Compareti: “The representation of Zoroastrian divinities in late Sasanian art and their description according to Avestan literature”

    Bahman Moradian: “The day of Mihr, the month of Mihr and the ceremony of Mihrized in Yazd”

    Ezio Albrile: “Hypnotica Iranica: Zoroastrian ecstasy in the West”

    Andrew D. Magnusson: “On the origins of the prophet Muhammad’s charter to the family of Salman Al-Farisi”

    Predrag Bukovec: “The soul’s judgement in Mandaeism: Iranian influences on Mandaean afterlife”

    Daphna Arbel: “On human’s elevation, hubris, and fall from glory. Traditions of Yima/Jamshid and Enochmetatron – an indirect cultural dialogue?”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “The order of metals in Daniel 2 and in Persian apocalyptic”

    Myriam Wissa: “Pre-Islamic topos in Dhu’l-Nūn Al-Misrī’s teaching: A re-assessment of the Egyptian roots of the knowledge of the name of god and their interaction with Zoroastrianism in the Achaemenid period ”

    David H. Sick: “The choice of Xerxes: A Zoroastrian interpretation of Herodotus 7.12-18”

  • Judeo-Persian Literature

    Iran Name 1,2Iran Nameh, New Series, Volume 1, Number 2 (Summer 2016)

    The second issue of Iran Nameh, New Series, Volume 1, Number 2 (Summer 2016), a memorial volume in honour of Professor Amnon Netzer (1934-2008), the Iranian-Jewish historian and researcher of Iranian Jewry and Judeo-Persian Literature is published. The volume comprises bilingual Persian and English contributions on different aspects of Judeo-Persian Literature and Iranian Jewry.

    Table of Contents

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  • Iranian Jews in Israel

    Cecolin, Alessandra. 2015.Iranian Jews in Israel: Between Persian Cultural Identity and Israeli Nationalism. (Library of Modern Middle East Studies). London: I.B. Tauris.
    Since the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, more than 40,000 Iranian Jews have moved to Israel, with the last big wave arriving after the Iranian Revolution of 1978/79. As the governments of these two states continue to display animosity towards each other, an examination of the Jews of Iran who now live in Israel provides important insights into the nature of the relationship between these two key countries in the Middle East. Alessandra Cecolin combines a historical approach to the patterns of Iranian Jewish emigration to Israel with a political analysis of Iranian-Israeli relations, exploring how the political and diplomatic interactions between the two have shaped the processes of emigration and integration of Iranian Jewry in Israel. In this book she explores how this community is often caught between a Persian cultural identity and Israeli nationality, and draws out the implications this has both for the community in Israel and for the wider region.
    About the Ahuthor
    Alessandra Cecolin (PhD 2013) is a scholar of Jewish history in the Department of History, Goldsmiths, University of London.

  • Judæo-Iranian Languages

    Torat Adonai, Constantinople: Eliezer ben Gershom Soncino, 1546 Detail. The right column contains Jacob Tavusi’s Judeo-Persian translation (BL Or. 70.c.10) © The British Library

    Borjian, Habib. 2015. Judeo-Iranian Languages. In Lily Kahn & Aaron D. Rubin (eds.), Handbook of Jewish Languages, 234–296. (Brill’s Handbooks in Linguistics). Leiden: Brill.

    Judeo-Iranian languages referring mostly to a group of Jewish variants of Iranian languages, many of them dialects of Persian, spoken or written with the Hebrew script by Jews in greater Iran over a period of more than a millennium. The corpus of Judeo-Iranian literature is very important for both linguistic and literary reasons, as it includes some of the earliest documents of New Persian, and because it constitutes a sizable literature written by Persian Jews.

     

    About the Handbook of Jewish Languages

    This Handbook of Jewish Languages is an introduction to the many languages used by Jews throughout history, including Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino) , and Jewish varieties of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Berber, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Malayalam, Occitan (Provençal), Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Syriac, Turkic (Karaim and Krymchak), Turkish, and more. Chapters include historical and linguistic descriptions of each language, an overview of primary and secondary literature, and comprehensive bibliographies to aid further research. Many chapters also contain sample texts and images. This book is an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Jewish languages, and will also be very useful for historical linguists, dialectologists, and scholars and students of minority or endangered languages.

    Habib Borjian is a scholar of Iranian lingustic, comparative historical philology and typology in Center for Iranian Studies at the  Columbia University as well as the senior assistant editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica.

  • On Judeo-Persian 2

    McCollum, Adam. 2015. On Judeo-Persian language and literature. Part Two: Texts and Bibliography. Ancient Jew Review.

    In a two-part series, Dr. Adam McCollum addresses the possibilities for the field of Judeo-Persian language and literature. Part One addresses the state of the field and Part Two includes a helpful bibliography and four text samples.

    You can find out more about Adam McCollum and his work over at his blog, hmmlorientalia, or at his highly recommended Twitter account: @adamcmccollum.

  • On Judeo-Persian 1

    McCollum, Adam. 2015. On Judeo-Persian language and literature. Part One: State of the field. Ancient Jew Review.

    In a two-part series, Dr. Adam McCollum addresses the possibilities for the field of Judeo-Persian language and literature. Part One addresses the state of the field and Part Two includes a helpful bibliography and four text samples.

    You can find out more about Adam McCollum and his work over at his blog, hmmlorientalia, or at his highly recommended Twitter account: @adamcmccollum.

  • In the margins of the Rabbinic curriculum

    Kiel, Yishai . 2015. In the margins of the Rabbinic curriculum: Mastering ʿUqṣin in the light of Zoroastrian intellectual culture. Journal for the Study of Judaism  46( 2): 251 – 281.

    The study situates the Babylonian rabbinic discussion concerning the spread of ritual pollution in produce in a broader cultural and intellectual context, by synoptically examining the rabbinic discussion against the backdrop of contemporaneous Zoroastrian legal discourse. It is suggested that the intimate affinity exhibited between the Babylonian rabbinic and Pahlavi discussions of produce contamination supports a fresh examination of the cultural significance of tractate ʿUqtzin in the Babylonian Talmud and the implications of its mastery on the intellectual and cultural identity of the Babylonian rabbis. The study posits that the self-reflective Talmudic reference to the knowledge and interest later generations of Babylonian rabbis possessed in tractate ʿUqtzin and the spread of ritual pollution in produce reflects the relative significance of these topics in the broader intellectual agenda of the Sasanian period. The later Babylonian rabbis boasted about their knowledge of tractate ʿUqtzin, which extended far beyond the capacity of earlier generations, precisely because this topic best reflected the intellectual currents of their time.

  • From Old to New Persian

    Utas, Bo. 2013. From Old to New Persian: Collected essays (Beiträge Zur Iranistik 38). Edited by Carina Jahani & Mehrdad Fallahzadeh. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.

    In a long series of essays, written during almost half a century, Bo Utas analyses the development of West Iranian languages, particularly Old, Middle, and New Persian, from various perspectives. The focus is placed on the transition from Middle to New Persian and the final essays (hitherto partly unpublished) especially elucidate this process in the light of an interaction between oral and written language.
    This book is the second volume of collected articles by Bo Utas. The first volume, Manuscript, Text and Literature. Collected Essays on Middle and New Persian Texts, was published on the occasion of his 70th birthday as no. 29 in the series Beiträge zur Iranistik in 2008.
    The seventeen articles in the present volume cover a time span of about 2,500 years and encompass all the stages of Persian. It also contains two entirely new articles, “The Grammatical Transition from Middle to New Persian” and “Between Spoken and Written: The Formation of New Persian”, which sum up much of Bo Utas’ philological research.

    For more information, see the preface to this volume and the ToC.
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  • Review: The Iranian Talmud

    Herman, Geoffrey. 2015. Review of Secunda, Shai. 2014. The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. AJS Review 39(1), 170–173.

  • Learning from the Magi

    Religious Studies presents: “Learning from the Magi: Zoroastrianism and the New Movement in Talmud Study” with Shai Secunda | Taube Center for Jewish Studies

    Friday, May 15, 2015 – 12:15pm – 1:30pm

    The lecture is part of a Zoroastrianism Studies Lecture Series sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University. For questions about the series, please contact Dr. Yuhan Vevaina (vevaina@stanford.edu).

    Source: Religious Studies presents: “Learning from the Magi: Zoroastrianism and the New Movement in Talmud Study” with Shai Secunda | Taube Center for Jewish Studies