Tales in Context

Kushelevsky and her translators, Ruchie Avital and Chaya Naor, have rendered a tremendous service in making these medieval Hebrew tales accessible to a wider audience. As the tales circulate, they will be read in unanticipated and illuminating contexts.

~Pinchas Roth

Sefer ha-Ma'asim is one of the most interesting collections of Hebrew stories that survived from the Middle Ages. In addition to being an entertaining and rich body of medieval folklore, it is one of the most revealing texts about Jewish life and spiritual world— not of the learned elite, but of the larger segments of Jewish society in twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present edition of the early thirteenth century manuscript is one of the most comprehensive scholarly edition of any Hebrew collection of tales known to us from the Middle Ages. It is not only a presentation and translation of texts, but an in-depth study of Jewish minority folklore in Christian Europe.

~Eli Yassif

This welcome edition of the Sefer ha-ma‘asim, an anthology of sixty-nine Hebrew tales adapted, arranged, and composed in thirteenth-century France, offers readers a literary feast.

~Susan L. Einbinder

[...] the stories [of the Sefer ha-ma'asim], which we can now read in English in "Texts in Context," open an entire new window into the daily lives of Ashkenazi Jewry.

~Aaron Howard

In Tales in Context, Rella Kushelevsky presents the student and scholar of medieval folklore and Jewish life in Christian Europe with a vital resource. Moreover, her rich and insightful theses about the composition of this work from the literary, scribal and cultural perspectives, coupled with the historical epilogue by Elisheva Baumgarten, will further enlighten readers in a variety of fields.

~Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law at Yeshiva University

This is an important book that makes available a unique collection of medieval Hebrew stories that the author places in their comparative literary and cultural settings.

~Ivan G. Marcus, Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University

This important book provides Jewish Studies scholars, medievalists and students of European culture with a point of entry into the sources that both shape and reflect the complex worlds of medieval northern-French Jews. The profound literary, comparative and historical analysis, supplemented by an annotated edition and translation of the medieval tales and a facsimile edition of the beautiful Bodleian Library manuscript, turn this book into a treasure trove.

~Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Professor in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev