Shaking the Pillars of Exile: 'Voice of a Fool, ' an Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture

by Talya Fishman

This book explores a heretical blueprint for Jewish modernization written by a Venetian rabbi (under cover of pseudonym) in the early seventeenth century, almost two centuries before political emancipation. The analysis of this text, Kol Sakhal ("Voice of a Fool"), highlights the ways in which it harnessed concepts and methods drawn from the texts of rabbinic Judaism itself in order to reform Jewish culture from within. This book thus challenges...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804728208
• ISBN13: 9780804728201
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.