Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rella Kushelevsky

Titel

Book Reviews: “Sefer Hasidim” and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. xiii + 202 pp

Ist Teil von

• Association for Jewish Studies. AJS Review, 2019, Vol.43 (2), p.468-470

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge: University of Pennsylvania Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• (5) He likens the composition process of Sefer Ḥasidim to an inverted pyramid (4) at whose broad base are thousands of small units of text that the author channeled into a number of parallel versions at the bottom tip (as opposed to numerous variants derived from a single Ur-text at the top of a pyramid). The first chapter, following the introduction, lays out the theory of Sefer Ḥasidim as an open book; it presents detailed and convincing evidence for this argument based on the work's entire corpus of manuscripts and printed editions, which attest to the independence of the small textual units within the work's composition processes. The fourth chapter sets Sefer Ḥasidim within the broader context of books in Ashkenaz that, according to Marcus, appear to have, “to one degree or another,” an “open book” format, pointing out how the segmented structure and, more limitedly, variations in sequence also appear in other Ashkenazic works across various genres.