Jewish Literary Cultures

“This is a perceptive, deeply detailed, carefully crafted study. The essays collected here originated in a variety of settings over the course of Stern’s career. In bringing them together, Stern reveals the deep power and meaning for Jewish culture of literary forms and of the book as a cultural artifact.”

—A. J. Avery-Peck Choice

“In volume 2 of his three-part study of Jewish book culture, David Stern explores the literary imagination behind several little-known but fascinating medieval Hebrew works. He also offers a masterful demonstration of how much cultural history is concealed in the formal properties of ancient books and manuscripts. Stern writes with literary sensitivity, scholarly versatility, and an inside knowledge of classic Jewish texts.”

—Raymond Scheindlin, author of A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood

“This unusual book brings together some of the outstanding fruits of David Stern’s research over the years, which began with a focus on Jewish literary culture and developed into an interest in Jewish book culture and the relationship between the two. It takes us on a fascinating journey from the abstract text to the tangible material volume, from the minds of those who study a text to the sensations of those who hold books in their hands.”

—Katrin Kogman-Appel, author of Jewish Book Art Between Islam and Christianity: The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain

“Stern tells the reader how he experienced the transition from analyzing the abstract (the textual) to studying the tangible (the material), from his focus on hermeneutics to his interest in practice, and Jewish Literary Cultures with its elegant prose follows this path beautifully. But what makes this book so rich is, in fact, not necessarily the transition from one approach to another but rather the combination of the two.”

—Katrin Kogman-Appel Speculum