Anyone Else Writing About Jewish History?

Yigael Yadin wrote a sort of coffee-table book about the "Bar Kokhba Dig". It's a site in a remote location where some refugees holed up in a cave while the Romans built a fort to pin them down. Israeli excavators found a cache of personal property including letters to rebel leaders, deeds, wills, that sort of thing. If you haven't looked into that, I'd recommend it highly.

gothicangel said:

I am about to start researching my next WIP, set during the Bar-Kokhba revolt against Rome (CE 132-5.) I have some very good history about the actual war, and have read up on Jewish history and Jerusalem itself, and intend to read Josephus too.

My issue is, I want to make my Jewish characters as authentic as possible, and not come out with the typical stereotypes or filthy barbarian tropes. In the recent Roman fiction I've read, Jewish communities have come across much the same as the Roman characters, except with a different skin tone and accented. That is what I want to avoid. I would like to look at maybe playing with syntax to differentiate between a Roman and Jewish speaker, but don't really know any Aramaic texts apart from The Torah. Also, I need to research Jewish culture in the 2nd Century CE, most of the books/websites I can find are about modern Jewish culture.

So, any recommendations for non-fic? I would also love to read some fiction that fits with what I am trying to aim for.

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I am NOT an expert but, iirc, Hebrew does not have the verb 'I am' - so if exactly translated the Hebrew אני מורה which means 'I am a teacher' exactly translated would mean 'I teacher'.

Kaddish is Aramaic for holy and is in, mostly, Aramaic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaddish scroll down and there is a list of films that have used Kaddish, so you can hear it read,spoken or sung.

Just found this - not sure if it will be of any help to you http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/hebrew/guide/

You are welcome! Knowing very little about Bar-Kokhbar I did a little research - starting with the OUP Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Some of the following books are available at Amazon for silly sums of money - either pennies or many pounds!
Bibliography for Bar-Kokhba’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (OUP 1997)

Richard S Marks, The Image of Bar Kokhba in Traditional Jewish Literature: False Messiah and National Hero (University Park, Pa 1994)

Lawrence H Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, (Hoboken, N.J. 1991) pp 171-174

Emil Schurer, The HHHHHHH kkkkHHHistory of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, revised and edited by Geza Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black, vol 1 (Edinburgh, 1973) pp514-557

E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule, from Pompey to Diocletian: A study in Political Relations, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 20 (leiden 1981) pp 428 -466

Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba: The rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome (New York, 1971)

gothicangel said:

Also, I need to research Jewish culture in the 2nd Century CE, most of the books/websites I can find are about modern Jewish culture.

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It seems a weird, in-between era of Jewish history, doesn't it? After the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, but before the first formal redactions of the 'oral law.' So it's growing toward the rabbinic Judaism we have today, but not quite.

You might want to research on the development of the synagogue and our liturgy. Once the Temple was gone, synagogues really took over as the primary gathering places for Jewish worship. And the services changed to reflect the loss of the Temple. (For example, our extra service today on Saturday mornings, Musaf, is in honor of the extra sacrifices that used to be offered at the Temple.) But I don't know when those changes happened--whether it was soon after the destruction, putting it in your time period, or later.

There's a good series on Jewish liturgy called My People's Prayerbook. It's not a history of the services, but it gives a lot of background on them. The library of your local synagogue probably has them. In fact, asking your local synagogue for resources--especially if it has a decent library--is probably a good idea.

You might want to look into reputable scholars of early Christianity. Since Judaism and Christianity were still in the midst--or immediate aftermath--of a nasty divorce, Jewish culture of the time often gets considerable mention. And there are Jewish scholars, like Jill Levine, who look for clues about Jewish culture of that time period in the New Testament.

(I have read Jill Levine yet--she's on my TBR list--but she's probably worth checking out.)

Finally, I supsect that Jewish culture of that day was not much more homogenized than it is now. There would have been Hellenized and Romanized Jews--mostly, but probably not exclusively, in the diaspora--who spoke Greek or Latin rather than Aramaic and even read the Torah in Greek rather than Hebrew.

Hope this helps!

gothicangel said:

That is brilliant, thanks. I never thought about looking at film!

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As much as I dislike Mel Gibson as an anti-Semitic douche, The Passion of the Christ was all in Aramaic - if you just want to hear the language.

If you're curious about Jewish thought or what Jewish scholars were discussing at this time (Bar Kochba's) you might want to look at a copy of the Mishnah - the oral law. The 'oral law' was put into writing after the loss of so many Jewish scholars during and around the Revolt.