E-Books →Rituals of Childhood Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe

Free Download Ivan G. Marcus, "Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe"
English | ISBN: 0300076584 | | 208 pages | AZW3 | 1439 KB
In medieval times, when a Jewish boy of five began religious schooling, he was carried from home to a teacher and placed on the teacher's lap. He was then asked to recite the Hebrew alphabet and lick honey from the slate on which it was written, to eat magically inscribed cooked peeled eggs and cakes, to recite an incantation against a demon of forgetfulness, and then to go down to the riverbank with the teacher, where he was told that his future study of the Torah, like the rushing river, would never end. This book-Ivan Marcus's erudite and novel interpretation of this rite of passage-presents a new anthropological historical approach to Jewish culture and acculturation in medieval Christian Europe.