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Rabbi Moshe Isserles and the Study of Science Among Polish Rabbis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

David E. Fishman
Affiliation:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Extract

Conventional wisdom has it that Ashkenazic rabbinic culture was far less receptive to non-Jewish learning and worldly disciplines than its Sephardic counterpart. Whereas great Sephardic rabbis such as Maimonides and many others were masters of philosophy, medicine, and science, Ashkenazic rabbis usually restricted their intellectual horizons to talmudic literature and, in the best of cases, “broadened” them to include the Bible and/or Kabbalah. Ashkenazic rabbinic culture was, according to this image, insular and unidimensional.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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Footnotes

*

Paper first presented at the conference on “Tradition and Crisis Revisited” at Harvard University, October 1988.

References

Archival References

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