The small silver box offers a peek into the Jewish world far beyond the home of the wealthy Italian woman who owned it during the Renaissance.
Probably a wedding gift, the casket held the keys to the anonymous lady’s linen closets — and reveals many issues about the lives of Jews to this day, says Jewish historian David Biale of Berkeley.
On the lid, intricate dials with Hebrew numerals kept tabs of the number of garments in her closet. A front panel depicts domestic scenes of making challah, lighting candles and a naked woman immersing herself in a mivkah.
“The whole casket just raises so many fascinating questions,” says Biale, who describes the box, which is housed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, in the preface of the recently published book, “Cultures of the Jews.”
Among the questions: Was the Hebrew alphabet used by a literate Jewish woman to avoid pilferage by her Christian servants? How well educated was she?
Is the naked figure on the box proof that more liberal standards of the day superseded rabbinical sanctions about modesty?
Biale says the ancient casket raises still-relevant notions about the role of Jewish women in society, questions of assimilation and of the importance of Jewish law.
“It’s all there, held in the box,” says Biale.
The same might be said for the 1,232-page book.
Biale served as editor of the work, which contains essays on Jewish cultures throughout the world from biblical times through the 20th century.
“It’s true that it’s quite massive,” he says, adding that he obviously doesn’t expect readers to devour the material in a single sitting.
At the same time, the work is designed for an educated lay readership. “It’s not an academic book,” says Biale, a professor of Jewish history at U.C. Davis and former director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union.
“It’s really intended to draw people in.”
Neither an encyclopedia nor a dictionary, the book contains essays by 23 scholars with specialties in such disciplines as archaeology, literature, folklore, cultural history and art history.
“We’ve tried to cover what we think were some of the most important and interesting Jewish cultures,” said Biale, who noted that the effort took seven years.
Despite the book’s impressive size, Biale thinks an appetite exists in non-academic circles for such a comprehensive work.
“Our community is a very educated community,” he said. “People are capable of reading something that’s not ‘Judaism lite.'”
The volume includes chapters about Hellenistic Judaism, Jews living in Christian Spain in the 14th century and contemporary Jews in North Africa and the Middle East.
“This is really the first collaborative history of the Jews in 30 years,” Biale said. And the effort is the labor of a new generation of scholars specializing in Jewish studies.
Noting that Jewish studies historically were limited to a handful of positions at universities and seminaries, he said, “it’s expanded by many, many fold” in recent decades. “Now virtually every university in the country has courses in Jewish studies. Our work is kind of the fruits of this new generation of scholars since the late ’60s.”
Biale will join some of the other contributors addressing themes in the book in panel discussions scheduled for the Osher Marin JCC on Thursday, Jan. 23 and at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El on Monday, Feb. 3.
Each essay in the book uses a specific “cultural artifact,” such as the Italian box, to launch into a discussion of the cultural life of Jews of that time and place.
For instance, an essay by Benjamin Gampel, a professor at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary of America, explores the changes experienced by the Sephardic culture in Christian Spain.
It contains an excerpt from a letter written by a young Jewish man to his former teacher, a rabbi who converted to Christianity. “My mind was restless and my heart neither slumbered nor slept,” writes the man, wondering what prompted his mentor’s decision.
Another chapter includes a discussion of the Judaization of Muslim khamsa plaques in Morocco and other Middle Eastern countries.
The essays explore many themes dealing with Jewish identity, connections to surrounding non-Jewish communities, the role of women and the relationship between rabbinical law and popular practices.
“We’re trying to ask questions about Jewish cultures throughout the ages that are questions that are very relevant to contemporary Jewish culture,” said Biale. “These are issues that are very, very pressing to us today. What we want to illustrate was they were always pressing issues.”