Academic literature on the topic 'Mishnah. Shabbat'

Abstract: Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture studies, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion. Abstract: Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion.

Thus we are told in one of the most famous narratives in talmudic literature, in its most elaborate and complex version in the Babylonian Talmud. The late ancient and early medieval rabbinic popularity of Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai's (henceforth Rashbi) sojourn in the cave is demonstrated by the wide distribution of the motif in various rabbinic texts. It later gained additional prominence in the Jewish collective imagination to such a degree that no less than the composition of the Zohar was attributed to Rashbi; indeed, the text was considered a product of his sojourn in the cave. As is the case with other extensive narratives in the Babylonian Talmud about early rabbinic sages from the days of the Mishnah, different and most likely earlier versions of the whole or parts of this story can be found elsewhere in rabbinic literature. Others have gone about the task of carefully assembling and comparing the versions of the story, and various interpretations of it have been offered. Surely, any additional attempt at making sense of the story and decoding what the rabbinic narrators in the Babylonian Talmud sought to convey with its inclusion in the larger corpus needs to take this work into account.

Despite repeated biblical mentions of the sanctity of the Sabbath and numerous imperatives to keep the day holy, there is little in rabbinic writings on the Sabbath reflecting these facets of the day’s observance. In contrast, Jewish writers from the Second Temple period and members of the Samaritan-Israelites actively sanctified the Sabbath by maintaining the day in a state of ritual purity. In this article, I reassess the exegetical and theological origins of this latter practice. I illustrate how non-rabbinic writers were attuned to the web of biblical connections between Sabbath, Tabernacle/Temple, and Eden, which they understood as bringing the Sabbath into the realm of cultic law. Just as access to the Temple demanded the ritual purity of the entrant, so too entering the Sabbath day. This “spatialization” of ritual time coheres with other known extensions of the domain of Temple laws. With these findings as a backdrop, I present the previously unexplained ritual purity tangents attested in Mishnah Shabbat as both responding to, and dismissing, the sectarian practice. This move coheres with an additional phenomenon, whereby the rabbis systematically disengaged the imperative to sanctify the Sabbath from the people. Whereas Jewish theologians see in the rabbinic Sabbath a temporal Temple, such an understanding is foreign to rabbinic literature and instead finds its best articulation in sectarian sources.

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The intense circulation of the sacred Jewish writings at the end of the 1st Century CE not only has transferred to the literature a large place of memory and tradition, as it has opened the doors to the regency of rabbinic Judaism as the dominant form of Jewish experience. The great volume of writings that has circulated inside and outside of Palestine has outlined the necessity for the standardization of the Jewish canon by a portion of the Pharisaic rabbinate and, at the same time, it was a representative of the illegitimacy that many communities have seen in some writings, as well as the autonomy that has been directed to the interpretations of the Mitsvah (oral Law) from different halakhot (practical form of the Mitsvah). In face of this process, we return our analyzes to the distinct voices present in this course and which are represented mainly by the Mishnah and the Qumran Manuscripts. The first source, has declared official, contains the compilation of the Oral Law from the studies made by the Schools of Pharisaic Sages established in the ancient Near East from the 4th Century BCE ; the second, resulting of the writings from the Palestinian diaspora, contains a rich collection of the precepts designated in the Oral Law, as well as a sectarian legislation belonging to the Qumran community. Since we have the possibility to find in the Qumran Manuscripts distinct halakhot from those present in the writings that have given shape to the Pharisaic Jewish canon, we place the understanding of the events that have allowed the rise of rabbinical Judaism to the voices that were hidden from this process, provinding a greater clarity to the (in)fidelity of the official Jewish canon with other literary traditions, since the sources do not demonstrate any legislative homogeneity even within Palestine.
A intensa circulação dos sagrados escritos judaicos ao final do séc. I EC , não somente transferiu para a literatura um amplo local de memória e tradição, como abriu portas para a regência do judaísmo rabínico como a forma dominante da vivência judaica. O grande volume de escritos que circularam dentro e fora da Palestina, delinearam a necessidade da normatização do cânone judaico por uma parcela do rabinato farisaico e, ao mesmo tempo, foram representantes da ilegitimidade que muitas comunidades viam em alguns escritos, assim como a autonomia com que direcionavam e produziam suas interpretações sobre a Mitsvah (Lei oral) a partir de diferentes halakhot (forma prática da Mitsvah). Diante de tal processo, voltamos nossas análises às distintas vozes presentes nesse decurso e que são representadas, principalmente, pela Mishnah e pelos Manuscritos de Qumran. A primeira fonte, declarada oficial, contém a compilação da Lei oral a partir dos estudos feitos pelas Escolas de Sábios farisaicas instauradas no antigo Oriente Próximo desde o século IV AEC ; a segunda, resultante dos escritos oriundos da diáspora palestina, contém um rico acervo dos preceitos designados na Lei oral, além de uma legislação sectária própria à comunidade de Qumran. Uma vez que temos a possibilidade de encontrar nos Manuscritos de Qumran distintas halakhot daquelas presente nos escritos que deram forma ao cânone judaico farisaico, condicionamos a compreensão dos eventos que permitiram a ascensão do judaísmo rabínico às vozes que ficaram ocultas desse processo, conferindo uma maior clareza à (in)fidelidade do cânone judaico oficial com as demais tradições literárias, visto que as fontes não demonstram qualquer homogeneidade legislativa mesmo dentro da Palestina.