Ram Ben-Shalom
Biographic Data
| ID | 1459463 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ram Ben-Shalom |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ram |
| FAMILY NAME | Ben-Shalom |
| SIGNATURE | BEN-SHALOM R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6837-6560 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Making of a Messianic Reality in the Iberian Peninsula After the Persecutions of 1391
This article reexamines the evidence for the messianic agitation that emerged in the Iberian Peninsula in the aftermath of the persecutions of 1391. Historians have generally treated the surviving Hebrew accounts as evidence for a messianic movement centered on a prophet or messianic figure named Moses, who allegedly appeared in Cisneros in Castile in 1392–1393. Modern scholarship has also attributed to Hasdai Crescas an active role in the dissem…
Paul in the Eyes of Profayt Duran
This article offers a new approach to Profayt Duran's Reproach of the Gentiles (Kelimat ha-goyim) , emphasizing the particular place accorded to Paul in this work and reading it against the background of converso Paulinism. This article integrates the idea of Paul the Jew in Reproach of the Gentiles with the broader ideology that Duran developed regarding the forced converts (ʾanusim) in his other writings. To some extent, based on the ambivalenc…
A New Interpretation of the Final Days of the Jewish Community of Pamiers
This article examines, and publishes in an annex, a letter written by Yom Tov ben Hannah of Montalbán. This letter describes how the seventy Jews of Pamiers were forced to raise money to ransom their lives. Henri Gross presumed that it was count Gaston III of Foix (d. 1391), who had tried to extort money from the Jewish community. A re-examination suggests that the imprisonment of the Jews of Pamiers occurred after the promulgation of the edict o…
The messianic journey of Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel to the Land of Israel re-examined
In 1210, thanks to increased contacts between Jewish communities in western Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the crusades, Jonathan ha-Kohen, head of the yeshivah of Lunel and leading Jewish Provençal sage of his time, set sail for Alexandria, from where he proceeded on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A year later, a group of sages from northern France and England arrived in Marseille, en route to Palestine. A number of scholars …
Translatio Andalusiae. Constructing Local Jewish Identity in Southern France
This article explores the question of national group cohesion among the Jews of southern France. The numerous political borders and the expulsion of the Jews from Languedoc (1306) afford us the opportunity to examine local – Provençal – Jewish group identity, in contrast to a broader Jewish conception of nationhood. An analysis of some Hebrew documents demonstrates the significance of the expulsion of the Jews as the “destruction of my native lan…
Living with Unanswered Questions
Hazut Qashah (Grievous Vision) is one of a number of studies on the Hebrew Bible by the fifteenth-century Jewish intellectual Isaac Nathan of Arles. This peculiar Hebrew text is composed of a list of thirteen questions about the book of Job without answers. An analysis of this work on the backdrop of Christian and Jewish scholasticism along with possible Eastern precedents such as Masaʾail , demonstrates its literary innovation, which is derived …
Medieval Jews and the Christian Past
The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. RamBen-Shalom offers a detailed analysis of Jews' exposure to the history of those among whom they lived. He shows that the Jews in these southern European lands experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeab…
A minority looks at the mendicants
This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietist…
Between Official and Private Dispute
Literary and historical evidence of religious disputes that took place between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages exists in a variety of sources. Hebrew manuscripts and Latin documents concerning such encounters survive from the disputations that were held in Paris (1240), Barcelona (1263), and Tortosa (1413–1414). Some of these were written by participants themselves after the events described. Some were produced by Christian authors as …
במאבק על ערכה של תורה
The Ban Placed by the Community of Barcelona on the Study of Philosophy and Allegorical Preaching - A New Study
The ban on philosophical studies imposed by Solomon ben Adret in 1305 was the acme of a long controversy between the philosophical camp and their opponents in Provence and Spain. One recent theory assumes that Ben Adret initially imposed the ban on the Jewish communities of Spain and Provence but soon changed his mind, claiming that the ban was local and had been imposed only on the community of Barcelona. It has also been claimed that his change…
The Converso as Subversive
I. Abravanel sert de point de depart pour l'etude des attitudes envers la conversion vecue par les juifs au 15e siecle. Cette approche est analysee a la lumiere des evenements historiques qui precedent le 15e siecle concernant les evenements contemporains de l'inquisition et s'interesse aux developpements ulterieurs. Abravanel donne aux convertis un role central dans la redemption. Il les voit comme des acteurs d'un processus historico-theologiqu…
A minority looks at the mendicants
This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietist…
Between Official and Private Dispute
Literary and historical evidence of religious disputes that took place between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages exists in a variety of sources. Hebrew manuscripts and Latin documents concerning such encounters survive from the disputations that were held in Paris (1240), Barcelona (1263), and Tortosa (1413–1414). Some of these were written by participants themselves after the events described. Some were produced by Christian authors as …
The Converso as Subversive
I. Abravanel sert de point de depart pour l'etude des attitudes envers la conversion vecue par les juifs au 15e siecle. Cette approche est analysee a la lumiere des evenements historiques qui precedent le 15e siecle concernant les evenements contemporains de l'inquisition et s'interesse aux developpements ulterieurs. Abravanel donne aux convertis un role central dans la redemption. Il les voit comme des acteurs d'un processus historico-theologiqu…
Translatio Andalusiae. Constructing Local Jewish Identity in Southern France
This article explores the question of national group cohesion among the Jews of southern France. The numerous political borders and the expulsion of the Jews from Languedoc (1306) afford us the opportunity to examine local – Provençal – Jewish group identity, in contrast to a broader Jewish conception of nationhood. An analysis of some Hebrew documents demonstrates the significance of the expulsion of the Jews as the “destruction of my native lan…
The Converso as Subversive
I. Abravanel sert de point de depart pour l'etude des attitudes envers la conversion vecue par les juifs au 15e siecle. Cette approche est analysee a la lumiere des evenements historiques qui precedent le 15e siecle concernant les evenements contemporains de l'inquisition et s'interesse aux developpements ulterieurs. Abravanel donne aux convertis un role central dans la redemption. Il les voit comme des acteurs d'un processus historico-theologiqu…
The Ban Placed by the Community of Barcelona on the Study of Philosophy and Allegorical Preaching - A New Study
The ban on philosophical studies imposed by Solomon ben Adret in 1305 was the acme of a long controversy between the philosophical camp and their opponents in Provence and Spain. One recent theory assumes that Ben Adret initially imposed the ban on the Jewish communities of Spain and Provence but soon changed his mind, claiming that the ban was local and had been imposed only on the community of Barcelona. It has also been claimed that his change…
במאבק על ערכה של תורה
Between Official and Private Dispute
Literary and historical evidence of religious disputes that took place between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages exists in a variety of sources. Hebrew manuscripts and Latin documents concerning such encounters survive from the disputations that were held in Paris (1240), Barcelona (1263), and Tortosa (1413–1414). Some of these were written by participants themselves after the events described. Some were produced by Christian authors as …
A minority looks at the mendicants
This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietist…
Medieval Jews and the Christian Past
The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. RamBen-Shalom offers a detailed analysis of Jews' exposure to the history of those among whom they lived. He shows that the Jews in these southern European lands experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeab…
Living with Unanswered Questions
Hazut Qashah (Grievous Vision) is one of a number of studies on the Hebrew Bible by the fifteenth-century Jewish intellectual Isaac Nathan of Arles. This peculiar Hebrew text is composed of a list of thirteen questions about the book of Job without answers. An analysis of this work on the backdrop of Christian and Jewish scholasticism along with possible Eastern precedents such as Masaʾail , demonstrates its literary innovation, which is derived …
Translatio Andalusiae. Constructing Local Jewish Identity in Southern France
This article explores the question of national group cohesion among the Jews of southern France. The numerous political borders and the expulsion of the Jews from Languedoc (1306) afford us the opportunity to examine local – Provençal – Jewish group identity, in contrast to a broader Jewish conception of nationhood. An analysis of some Hebrew documents demonstrates the significance of the expulsion of the Jews as the “destruction of my native lan…
A New Interpretation of the Final Days of the Jewish Community of Pamiers
This article examines, and publishes in an annex, a letter written by Yom Tov ben Hannah of Montalbán. This letter describes how the seventy Jews of Pamiers were forced to raise money to ransom their lives. Henri Gross presumed that it was count Gaston III of Foix (d. 1391), who had tried to extort money from the Jewish community. A re-examination suggests that the imprisonment of the Jews of Pamiers occurred after the promulgation of the edict o…
The messianic journey of Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel to the Land of Israel re-examined
In 1210, thanks to increased contacts between Jewish communities in western Europe and in the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the crusades, Jonathan ha-Kohen, head of the yeshivah of Lunel and leading Jewish Provençal sage of his time, set sail for Alexandria, from where he proceeded on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A year later, a group of sages from northern France and England arrived in Marseille, en route to Palestine. A number of scholars …
Paul in the Eyes of Profayt Duran
This article offers a new approach to Profayt Duran's Reproach of the Gentiles (Kelimat ha-goyim) , emphasizing the particular place accorded to Paul in this work and reading it against the background of converso Paulinism. This article integrates the idea of Paul the Jew in Reproach of the Gentiles with the broader ideology that Duran developed regarding the forced converts (ʾanusim) in his other writings. To some extent, based on the ambivalenc…
The Making of a Messianic Reality in the Iberian Peninsula After the Persecutions of 1391
This article reexamines the evidence for the messianic agitation that emerged in the Iberian Peninsula in the aftermath of the persecutions of 1391. Historians have generally treated the surviving Hebrew accounts as evidence for a messianic movement centered on a prophet or messianic figure named Moses, who allegedly appeared in Cisneros in Castile in 1392–1393. Modern scholarship has also attributed to Hasdai Crescas an active role in the dissem…
Philosophy (9 works) · History (8 works) · Medieval and Classical Philosophy (8 works) · Judaism (7 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · History (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Religious studies (5 works) · Theology (5 works)