Ideals Face Reality
Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550-1655
Jewish life in early modern Poland was characterized by an adherence to the halakhah that Polish Jewry had inherited from medieval Franco-German Jewry, and almost all aspects of Jewish activity, even the most personal of matters, fell within its purview. Fram draws upon talmudic and legal exegesis, the ordinances of Polish Jewry's political leadership, Polish legal records, and the responsa of some of the outstanding poseqim of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to show how Polish jurists responded to unfamiliar circumstances.
"This informative and well-written book-easily accessible to those unskilled in the intricacies of Talmud study, for which Polish Jewry was famed-is an important contribution to the field of Polish Jewish history.
-Slavonic and East European Review
Edward Fram
1997 / 186 pp / Monograph No. 21 / ISBN 0-87820-420-2, paper: $21.95
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