PDF Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Harvard East Asian Monographs) by Rebecca Nedostup in History

Description

From one of the leading historians of the Jewish past comes a stunning look into a previously unexamined dimension of Jewish life and culture: the calendar. In the late sixteenth century; Pope Gregory XIII instituted a momentous reform of Western timekeeping; and with it a period of great instability. Jews; like all minority cultures in Europe; had to realign their time-keeping to accord with the new Christian calendar. Elisheva Carlebach shows that the calendar is a complex and living system; constantly modified as new preoccupations emerge and old priorities fade. Calendars serve to structure time and activities and thus become mirrors of experience. Through this seemingly mundane and all-but-overlooked document; we can reimagine the quotidian world of early modern Jewry; of market days and sacred days; of times to avoid Christian gatherings and times to secure communal treasures. In calendars; we see one of the central paradoxes of Jewish existence: the need to encompass the culture of the other while retaining one’s own unique culture. Carlebach reveals that Jews have always lived in multiple time scales; and demonstrates how their accounting for time; as much as any cultural monument; has shaped Jewish life. After exploring Judaica collections around the world; Carlebach brings to light these textually rich and beautifully designed repositories of Jewish life. With color illustrations throughout; this is an evocative illumination of how early modern Jewish men and women marked the rhythms and realities of time and filled it with anxieties and achievements.