Leah makovetsky
| Leah makovetsky | |
|---|---|
 Leah makovetsky.jpg | |
| Born | November 19, 1948 Israel |
| 🏳️ Nationality | Jewish |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Title | Historian |
Leah Bornstein Makovetsky is an Israeli historian of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire. She is a professor at the Faculty of the Social Sciences and the Humanities at Ariel University.[1]
Biography[edit]
Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky was born in Tel Aviv, Israel (1948) to Avraham Benzion Bornstein, Rabbi of Binyamina and a descendant of Admorim of Kotzk, Sochatchov and Radomsk, and Esther (nee Yoner), a descendant of Baruch Fränkel-Teomim.[2]
After graduating from Tachkemoni High School in Hadera, she studied at Bar-Ilan University and was a student of Professor Haim Ze'ev Hirschberg. In 1979, she received a PhD in the history of the Jewish people under the guidance of Professor Moshe Beer and Professor Jacob M. Landau.[3] She did her postdoctoral fellowship in 1982 at the Harvard University’s Jewish Studies Center. She served as a Head of the Department of Jewish Heritage at Ariel University in 2011-2017 and as a Head of the MA Program in Jewish Heritage from October 2014 to October 2016. Since 2017, she has served as the head of the Department of History of the Jewish people in the New Era at Ariel University.
Research Methods[edit]
Bornstein-Makovetsky's research deals with a variety of subjects related to the history of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th-19th centuries. Her work is based on a range of Jewish and non-Jewish sources, and she tries to apply almost every available piece of information, making extensive use first and foremost of Rabbinical literature, but also of printed Ottoman documents, European archives, travel books, and newspapers. She strives to publish manuscripts that were hitherto unknown to scholarly community.[4]
Some of the topics with which she engaged and publicized[edit]
Community organization, religious and political leadership of the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, focusing on the Rabbinate and the courts.
In a comprehensive study Bornstein Makovetsky dealt with the character and activities of Jewish communal and rabbinic leadership in the Ottoman Empire, and highlighted internal struggles within the leadership. Her research also discussed the encounter between the various levels of the Ottoman authorities and the Jewish leadership. Other studies, dealing mainly with the Jewish communities in Greece, Aleppo,[5] and Egypt, looked into centrifugal impulses and consolidation trends within the communities, and showed the ways many communities were coping with the segregation trends through the enactment of regulations and even punishment.
Much research is devoted to study of rabbinical courts and their powers. Bornstein Makovetsky published a critical edition of the unique Minutes book (pinkas) of the Istanbul "Issur ve-Hetter" Court, which contains ordinances and decisions from 1710 to 1903, and the Minute book of Balat court from the year 1839.[6] The two works are important sources for delineating the social, religious and economic life of Istanbul Jewry and are now widely used in contemporary research. Much information is available in studies of the powers of the rabbinical courts and how they ruled in the laws that were within the jurisdiction of the Sharia courts.
Jewish lobbying and diplomacy in Ottoman Empire
In a series of articles Bornstein Makovetsky showed that the Court Jews in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th-18th centuries were engaged mainly in lobbying and very little in Jewish diplomacy, while usually Jews expectated the Court Jews to engage in lobbying.
The Rabbinical literature in the Ottoman Empire
A considerable part of Bornstein Makovetsky's work concerns itself with the study of the Responsa literature. She published a historical key to the hundreds of responsa written by Rabbi Shmuel Di Medina (1506-1589) from Salonica. The comprehensive introduction to the book is a monograph on the author and his connections with contemporary scholars. Similarly, she has written a comprehensive study of R. Shlomo ben Baruch from Arta, based mainly on his handwritten Responsa book. In a series of studies, she recorded all rabbinical literature composed in the communities in Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans in 1750-1900. One conclusion is that new genres did not develop in the 18th and 19th centuries and that not all printed books were in regular use in Jurisprudence. She also published a scientific edition of a unique manuscript from Aleppo, Beit Dino Shel Shmuel- Responsa of Rabbi Shmuel Laniado and the Sages of his generation, 2 Vols. The book includes 83 Halachic Responses from the 17th century and from the first half of the 18th century dealing with the life of the Jews in Aleppo and other communities in Syria, Iraq, Persia, as well as in other communities throughout the Ottoman Empire and some communities in West Europe.
Social Life, The Jewish family and the status of Jewish women and children in the Ottoman Empire, Adultery and Fornication
Bornstein Makovetsky examined family life and the status of Jewish women in the Ottoman Empire. The following topics stand out in these studies: the family as an economic unit; marriage and divorce among Jewish Ottoman society, especially in Istanbul, and the importance of inheritance regulations in the Jewish society. One conclusion is that divorce was very common and was not considered a negative stigma. Some articles discussed the ways in which Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire handled cases of adultery and fornication. She came to the conclusions that the phenomenon of adultery was wider than is documented in rabbinic sources, and that extradition of adulterers to the Ottoman authorities was a routine phenomenon. She came to some insights about the guardianship and custody of minor orphans and children of divorcees, and about the legal status of Jewish children, one of whose parents converted to Islam or Christianity.
Jewish names In a series of studies Bornstein Makovetsky discussed Jewish personal names and nicknames of men and women in Istanbul, Izmir, and Salonica drawn from divorce registers and gravestones from the beginning of the 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century. She examined the social and religious message of the names and, and the impact of Western culture on the Jews of the three communities.
Religious conversion to Islam and Christianity among Jewish Ottoman society and missionary work in the 19th century.
Bornstein Makovetsky devoted comprehensive research on the phenomenon of conversion of Jews to Islam and Christianity in Ottoman Empire in the 16th-19th centuries. Her striking conclusion is that the Rabbinic authorities did not ignore the serious problems triggered by apostasy on the family, and tried to find halakhic solutions to prevent apostasy, or to help the apostates to return back to Judaism. Her book Protestant Missionaries to the Jewish Communities of Istanbul, Salonika and Izmir 1820-1914 discussed the extensive activity of three missionary societies in the Jewish society. She proved that the missionaries erred in their early optimistic assessments.[7]
History of communities and Relations between them
Bornstein-Makovetsky researched the history of Jewish communities in Greece throughout the Ottoman period. In her monograph A city of sages and merchants: Aleppo during the years 1492-1800[8], she concentrated on the following topics: organization of the society and its leadership, the synagogue, the spiritual life, the Sabbatian movement, the family, the way of life, the relations with the Gentiles and the authorities, as well as the economic life.
The social encounters between Jews and Gentiles
In her study on the social encounters between Jews and Gentiles Bornstein Makovetsky came to some insights about the attitude of Ottoman Muslims toward the Jews. She distinguished between meetings in cities which were usually stressful and those outside cities, which were less stressed and often brougth about friendly relations between Jews and Gentiles. She examined the laws about blood money and retaliation. Her findings were that Ottoman Jews were able to avenge the blood of relatives and to receive blood money, according to the Ottoman law. But in most cases Jews received blood money and only in a few cases retaliation was carried out.
Teaching[edit]
Between 1973 and 2002, she taught at Bar Ilan University, specializing in the study of Jews in the Middle Ages and during the Ottoman period. Since 1990, she has been teaching Jewish history at Ariel University.
Books[edit]
- An index of the Responsa of Rabbi Shmuel de Medina, with introduction, Maftehot, The Research Institute on the Jews in the Orient and North Africa, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 1979 (Hebrew)
- The Istanbul Court Record in Matters of Ritual and Ethics, 1710-1903, Lod: Orot Yahadut Hamaghreb, 1999 (Hebrew)
- A City of Sages and Merchants: Aleppo during the Years 1492-1800, Ariel: Ariel University Center, 2012 (Hebrew)
- Rabbi Shmuel Laniado, Responsa Beit Dino Shel Shmuel, Critical edition from a unique manuscript with historical comprehensive introductions, 2 Volumes, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2016 (Hebrew)
- Protestant Missionaries to the Jewish Communities of Istanbul, Salonika and Izmir 1820-1914, Istanbul: Libra, 2019.
External links[edit]
- Leah Makovetsky-Bornstein, Ariel University
- Leah Makovetsky-Bornstein in the National Library of Israel website
- Divrei Rivovos Mafteachos Leah Bornstein, Bar Ilan,1974
- Leah Bornstein, The Structure of the Spiritual :eadership and the Jewish Courts of Law in 16th Ottoman Empire during the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries, M. A Thesis, Bar Ilan University 1972
- Leah Bornstein, The Jewish Communal Leadership in the Near East from the End of the 15th Century through the 18th Century, volume A, Ph.D. Thesis, Bar Ilan University 1978
- Leah Bornstein, The Jewish Communal Leadership in the Near East from the End of the 15th Century through the 18th Century, volume B, Ph.D. Thesis, Bar Ilan University 1978
- Leah Bornstein Makovetsky, The Istanbul Court Record in Matters of Ritual and Ethics , 1710-1903. Lod 1999.
References[edit]
- ↑ https://www.ariel.ac.il/projects/trp/GeneralInformation.asp?numRec=236&id_lang=1
- ↑ http://www.teshura.com/Makowitzky-Greenberg%20-%20Menachem%20Av%2015%2C%205775.pdf
- ↑ https://www.dmag.co.il/pub/histadrut/etrog/etrog64/files/assets/basic-html/page-25.html
- ↑ https://www.dmag.co.il/pub/histadrut/etrog/etrog64/files/assets/basic-html/page-26.html#
- ↑ http://din-online.info/pdf/etr85.pdf , page 56
- ↑ https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH990019651650205171/NLI
- ↑ https://orot.ac.il/sites/default/files/%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%98%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F%209_0_0.pdf
- ↑ https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH990034580800205171/NLI
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