Crossing the Jabbok

the long version

In Crossing the Jabbok, Sylvie-Anne Goldberg presents an ambitious study of the views of sickness and death among Ashkenazi Jews from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Focusing on Prague, in those years the center of Central and Western European Jewry, Goldberg describes the evolution of attitudes, beliefs, and practices concerning illness and death among Ashkenazi Jews throughout the German lands. Goldberg draws on a rich array of materials - including secular and religious texts, community records and charters, the Halakhah, writings of famous rabbis, and accounts of Jewish-Christian interrelations - to explore that culture. In particular, she seeks to discover the distinctively Jewish aspects of customs and beliefs surrounding illness and dying.