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Transmitting Jewish History

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in Conversation with Sylvie Anne Goldberg

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Sylvie Anne Goldberg, With a Foreword by Alexander Kaye, Translated by Benjamin Ivry

The deeply personal reflections of a giant of Jewish history. Scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932–2009) possessed a stunning range of erudition in all eras of Jewish history, as well as in world history, classical literature, and European culture. What Yerushalmi also brought to his craft was a brilliant literary style, honed by his own voracious reading from early youth and his formative undergraduate studies. This series of interviews paints a revealing portrait of this giant of history, bringing together exceptional material on Yerushalmi’s personal and intellectual journeys that not only attests to the astonishing breakthrough of the issues of Jewish history into “general history,” but also offers profound insight into being Jewish in today’s world.  

Cover Image of Transmitting Jewish History: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in Conversation with Sylvie Anne Goldberg
Cloth: $40 | E-book: $35
ISBN-13: 9781684580613
Pages: 208 | Size: 6 in. x 9 in.
Date Published: November 8, 2021
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The book reflects on what it means to be a Jew today. What was unique about Yerushalmi is that while he left traditional observance, he had a deep understanding of the core aspects of traditional Judaism.

Jewish Link

Reviews

  • In short, this is a story of how a Jewish kid from the Bronx left a lasting impression in the hallowed hallways of Harvard and Columbia universities. The book reflects on what it means to be a Jew today. What was unique about Yerushalmi is that while he left traditional observance, he had a deep understanding of the core aspects of traditional Judaism, as he received rabbinical ordination from Lieberman in 1957.

    Jewish Link

About the Author

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) was one of the most eminent Jewish historians of the twentieth century. He was Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History and Sephardic Civilization at Harvard University, and from 1980, Salo W. Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia University. His publications, written in his incomparable literary style, include From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (1971); Haggadah and History (1974); The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah (1979); Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1982) and Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991). Some of his collected essays appear in The Faith of Fallen Jews (2014). Yerushalmi’s broad erudition in all areas of Jewish history and European culture attracted students from all over the world, many of whom now hold leading academic positions.

Sylvie Anne Goldberg is a professor at the Center for Historical Research, L’E´cole des Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, where she heads the Jewish Studies Program. She is the author of several books, including Crossing the Jabbok: Illness and Death in Ashkenazi Judaism in Sixteenth- through Ninteenth-Century Prague and Clepsydra: Essay on the Plurality of Time in Judaism.

Benjamin Ivry is author of biographies of Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rimbaud, and Maurice Ravel, as well as a poetry collection, Paradise for the Portuguese Queen. He has translated books from the French by André Gide, Jules Verne, Witold Gombrowicz, and Balthus, among others and written about the arts and culture for numerous media.

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