Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (SUNY series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion)

"...[This book is] a serious, scholarly well-researched book on an important figure in early modern Jewish history and thought. It presents a great overview of Jewish life during the Renaissance, the histortiographic issues, and the man's place in the larger spectrum of Jewish philosophical thinking. It is important as a study of both Italian and Ottoman Jewry and of the history of responses to Maimonides." - Howard Adelman, Smith College It is a work of sound scholarship dealing with an interesting historical figure and his unique cultural world. The author focuses correctly on the transition from Italian to Ottoman Jewish culture in the life of David Messer Leon and reveals much about the continuities and discontinuities between both societies. He nicely fuses social and intellectual history, and uses a life to illuminate a number of interesting and important cultural trends among early modern Jews, particularly the integration of kabbalah and philosophy, Humanism and Thomism. The presentation of the symbiotic nature of Jewish culture with contemporary intellectual trends and the appropriation of Christian theological strategies by a Jewish thinker to explain Judaism make this study a fascinating one. The Italian Setting -- Educating An Italian Jewish Gentleman -- Italian Exile In The Ottoman Empire -- Communal Tensions -- Hakham Kolel: A Comprehensive Scholar -- A Jewish Dogmatist -- A Systematic Theologian. Hava Tirosh-rothschild. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 343-375) And Index.