CONTENTS

Stern, Sacha.
Mancuso, Piergabriele, 1975-
• An Astronomical Table by Shabbetai Donnolo and the Jewish Calendar in Tenth-Century Italy
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  Subject Headings:
  • Donnolo, Shabbetai, 913-ca. 982. Sefer ḥakhmoni.
  • Astronomy -- Tables.
  • Calendar, Jewish.
  Abstract:

  The astronomical table published for the first time in this article appears in a single manuscript (the oldest) manuscript of Shabbetai Donnolo’s Sefer Ḥaḵmoni, Oxford MS Heb.e.26, from the Cairo Geniza. It contains solar, lunar, and planetary ephemerides for the period of one lunar month identified as (Jewish) Elul and (Muslim) Safar, 4706, which corresponds approximately to September 946 CE. This table not only provides important evidence of Donnolo’s astronomical knowledge, but also assumes a Jewish calendar substantially different from the rabbinic calendar that was in use at the time in Babylonia and the East. It provides unique evidence that the Jews of tenth-century Italy followed an independent local Jewish calendar.

Bos, Gerrit, 1948-
Garofalo, Ivan.
• A Pseudo-Galenic Treatise on Regimen: The Hebrew and Latin Translations from Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq’s Arabic Version
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  Subject Headings:
  • Sefer ha-hanhagah.
  • Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī, 809?-873.
  • Galen -- Spurious and doubtful works,
  • Health -- Early works to 1800.
  Abstract:
  Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a fragmentary text that contains only the introduction to an originally larger work on the different kinds of food, their properties, names, and suitability for different human bodies. This larger work survives only in a Latin translation by Accursius de Pistoia (fl. 1200), entitled De dissolutione continua. Sefer ha-Hanhagah lacks unity and covers a wide variety of subjects, including: the necessity of consuming food; the suitability of different kinds of food for human bodies; exercise and sleep; appetite; coarse foods; habit. It concludes that proper diet requires detailed knowledge about the properties of the different kinds of food and the different natures of human bodies. Sefer ha-Hanhagah is not identical with any extant treatises composed by Galen on the preservation of health or on diet. Given its pseudo-Galenic character, it is possible that Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a summary of original Galenic material. A possible source of this work is the summary of Galen’s De alimentorum facultatibus reportedly produced by Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq. Ḥunayn claims that he drew on the Greek original of this work and on a number of other works containing much of what the ancients said about the subject of nutrition to prepare a summary in Syriac. This work he subsequently divided into three parts and translated into Arabic as the K. al-aghdhiya (Book on foodstuffs). Ḥunayn’s statement that he consulted a number of works tallies with our impression that Sefer ha-Hanhagah is a composite work. Still, we cannot be certain that Sefer ha- Hanhagah indeed goes back to Ḥunayn, for it is possible that Zeraḥyah Ḥen’s belief that the text he translated goes back to Ḥunayn was erroneous.

Bregoli, Francesca.
• Jewish Scholarship, Science, and the Republic of Letters: Joseph Attias in Eighteenth-Century Livorno
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  Subject Headings:
  • Attias, Joseph, 1672-1739.
  • Jewish learning and scholarship -- Italy -- Livorno -- History -- 18th century.
  • Italy -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.
  Abstract:

  Joseph Attias (1672–1739) was a Livornese savant who was active, in different roles, in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles. Despite his reputation as a great scholar, reinforced by his well-known exchanges with G. B. Vico and L. A. Muratori, Attias did not leave any literary remains and has never been studied in his own right. The catalogue of Attias’ extensive library of more than 1200 volumes, one of the largest Jewish-owned collections in the early eighteenth century, which has lately resurfaced in the State Archives of Livorno, allows for a reappraisal of his cultural proclivities. Based on a study of the catalogue, supplemented by published and unpublished sources that include the minutes of the Livornese Jewish council, private correspondence, and travel accounts, Attias’ activities as a cultural mediator are reconstructed and his intellectual stance, including his Hebraic learning and role in the Livornese Jewish community alongside his secular studies, is considered. Attias’ involvement with the scientific culture of his days, his participation in the Republic of Letters, and his involvement with the Inquisition are investigated.

Cohen, Stephen M.
• Chemical Literature in Yiddish: A Bridge between the Shtetl and the Secular World
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  Subject Headings:
  • Chemical literature.
  • Yiddish literature -- History and criticism.
  • Jewish learning and scholarship.
  Abstract:

  A confluence of circumstances—few opportunities for Russian Jews to attend higher education, nearly universal use of Yiddish among Eastern European Jews, an influx of household technology based on new chemistry, and the beckoning of Enlightenment education—promoted the use of Yiddish to describe scientific matters. Among the scientific topics explained for Yiddish readers was chemistry, as part of the goal of exposing secular Jews unable to get a formal education to modern science and technology, and—ultimately—of introducing Yiddish speakers to secular philosophy and knowledge. Thus scientific Yiddish flowered in the early twentieth century and was used as a lively means for communicating scientific knowledge and values via chemistry in various formats—for serious students, but especially for the self-taught and interested laypersons. This literature included textbooks, essays for nonscientists, glossaries for academic and home use, government propaganda, teacher’s guides, and journalistic discussions of the history and politics of chemical matters. Only original research was absent from the Yiddish chemical literature.

Reisman, Arnold, 1934 Aug. 2-
• Jewish Refugees from Nazism, Albert Einstein, and the Modernization of Higher Education in Turkey (1933–1945)
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  Subject Headings:
  • Refugees, Jewish -- Turkey -- History -- 20th century.
  • Education, Higher -- Turkey -- History -- 20th century.
  • Jewish scientists -- Turkey -- History -- 20th century.
  • Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955.
  Abstract:

  Some 190 persecuted scientists from Nazi Germany found refuge in Turkey between 1933 and 1945. In July 1933, the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland (Emergency Assistance Organization for German Scientists) contacted the Turkish government, asking it to offer positions to senior level persecuted scientists and physicians (Jewish and non-Jewish). The Turkish government, for its part, was already engaged in a vast enterprise of reforming its system of higher education and was keen to seize this opportunity. Historians have taken little notice of this important episode of the Shoah, in which Albert Einstein also played a role (albeit minor). The integration of the émigré scientists in Turkey is described and their influence on its development discussed. The perception of this episode by public opinion in Turkey today is also considered.

Langermann, Y. Tzvi.
• From my Notebooks: A Compendium of Renaissance Science: Taʿalumot Ḥoḵmah by Moses Galeano
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  Subject Headings:
  • Galeano, Moses ben Judah. Taʻalumot ḥokhmah.
  • Jewish learning and scholarship.
  Abstract:

  Taʿalumot ḥoḵmah (“Puzzles of Wisdom”), a compendium of Renais-sance knowledge composed by Moses ben Judah Galeano around the year 1500, is one of the most idiosyncratic and historically interesting specimens of Hebrew scientific literature. The author was a physician, astronomer, and translator, active at the court of Bayazid II, who spent some time in Italy and Crete as well. Ostensibly a catalogue of errors, in which Galeano reviews mistakes of reasoning on scientific and other issues, his book is a rich repository of information. Various items in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, alchemy, and ethics are examined in depth. The most exciting of these is a discussion of astronomical models in which the author includes the system of Ibn al-Shāṭir, which displays a strong resemblance to Copernicus’ models. Taʿalumot ḥoḵmah offers the first evidence that someone who knew Ibn al-Shāṭir well was present in Italy.

Recently Published Books

• Recently Published Books
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  Subject Headings:
  • Judaism and science -- Bibliography.

Contributors

• Note on Contributors
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