This article explores Josephus’s account of Seleucid history in Antiquities 13.365-371. In this passage, Josephus focuses on the Seleucid monarchs Seleucus VI, Demetrius III, and Antiochus X Eusebes and their fight for control of Syria. The difficulty in understanding this section is that it interrupts Josephus’s narrative of the reign of Alexander Jannaeus and does not fully explain events in Syria that led to the endless civil wars there. Through the use of historical and numismatic data unavailable to Josephus, this study examines the background of the Seleucid rulers to explain why their struggle was important for understanding Hasmonean history. Josephus begins this section on Seleucid history with Seleucus VI because his death created the political instability that led to a prolonged civil war between the remaining sons of Grypus (Antiochus XI Philadelphus, Philip I Epiphanes, Demetrius III, and Antiochus XII Dionysus) and the son of Antiochus IX Cyzicenus (Antiochus X Eusebes). For Josephus, this conflict was important since the fraternal civil war between these rulers led to the dissolution of the Seleucid Empire and its takeover by the Romans: a fate shared by the Hasmonean state. By placing this account of Seleucid history in his narrative of Jannaeus’s reign, Josephus uses events in Syria to foreshadow the fraternal strife in the Hasmonean state that likewise made it vulnerable to the Roman legions of Pompey.
 

 In this paper, I argue that the coins of the Jewish war of 66-70 C.E. demonstrate the theocratic conception of the Zealots and of the faction of Simon bar Giora. They are designed as responses to Roman issues and, therefore, are influenced by Roman currency. This minting is a powerful affirmation of independence for a so-called Jewish “State.” The divisions into several factions make it impossible to recognize a unanimous conception of what the political system among the Jews must have been. However, each coin seems to support the theocratic ideal, focalized either on the temple of Jerusalem or on the redemption of the people.
 

There is no scholarly discussion on the impact of the Barbarian invasions on the Jewish communities of Roman Italy. Roman Italy fell victim to a series of invasions. First the invasion of Alaric’s Visigoths in 410 C.E., and then that of Genseric’s Vandals in 455 C.E., which culminated in the sack of Rome. These were followed by the establishment of the Roman-Barbaric Kingdom of the Ostrogoths, and the subsequent disastrous Gothic War (535-554 C.E.), which brought Italy back under Justinian’s rule. The Barbarian conquest of Italy ended with the Lombard invasion in the second half of the sixth century, around 568 C.E.
The purpose of this article, therefore, is to demonstrate that the Barbarian invasions brought profound changes to the geographic distribution and the demographic development of the Jews living in Late Antique Italy. Thus, a close look at epigraphic data shows that the destruction that came in the wake of the Barbarian invasions probably resulted in the total destruction of the various Jewish communities established in northern Italy, and a substantial decrease, even decline in the Jewish population of Rome, sacked twice by the Barbarians during the fifth century, and much damaged by Justinian’s Gothic wars in the middle of the sixth century. On the other hand, it is possible to observe a slow demographic and geographic increase, albeit one that is difficult to measure, of the Jews living in southern Italy. This part of the peninsula suffered much less damage than the rest of the peninsula as a consequence of the Barbarian invasions, as attested in the epigraphic evidence from Venosa. Thus, by the end of the Barbarian invasions, the geographical distribution of the Jewish communities in southern Italy anticipated that of the early Middle Ages, attested in the eighth and ninth centuries C.E.
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 614 424. It was part of the ERC Judaism and Rome, and was realized within the framework of the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, UMR 7297 TDMAM (Aix-en-Provence).
 

 This article contains a brief description of the Codex of Petrarch, which is located in the Czartoryski Library in Kraków. Preliminary analysis proves that the Codex comes from Italy or France. The Czartoryski family bought it in the nineteenth century. The Petrarch Codex contains two incomplete biblical books: Genesis 23:8 – Exodus 14:28, i.e. Hebrew text and Aramaic translation. The analysis is focused on three main aspects: historical, paleographical and linguistics. The detailed analysis proved that the Aramaic text was in some aspects very similar to Targum Onkelos, and in others it was very similar to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. Most importantly, the text contains an unknown version of Targum Onkelos. Therefore the article also shows morphological and grammatical differences between the official edition of the Targum Onkelos and the text.
 

 The article presents the activities of a preacher and teacher Szymon Dankowicz (1834-1910). In the 1860s Dankowicz was active in progressive circles in Warsaw. He had bonds with several institutions such as the Warsaw Rabbinic Seminary, the Lomdei Torah association, and the salon of the young Jewish intelligentsia; he also published in two Polish-Jewish periodicals Jutrzenka and Izraelita. In 1865 he unsuccessfully applied for the preacher position in the Daniłowiczowska Street synagogue. After 1868 he served as a preacher in the Kraków progressive synagogue. There he delivered sermons in the Polish language and manifested his pro-Polish attitude. In this city he also developed extensive pedagogical and charitable work. In later years Dankowicz applied for a preacher position at the Tempel in Lviv (1890) and served for several years in the Tarnopol Tempel (1895-1898). His biography, especially when compared to the biographies of other preachers, is an important example of the activities of a progressive preacher in partitioned Polish lands.

 In the early 1880s, when Russian politics took a strong anti-Semitic turn, a campaign was initiated in order to limit the number of Jews in the bar. The anti-Semitic weekly Rola took active part in this campaign. Rola claimed that a once respected profession had lost its social prestige because of the inflow of Jewish members into the bar, to which they had introduced the logic of financial profit. Its journalists condemned the moral relativism of Jewish lawyers, who had begun to “infect” Polish social life when they gradually took over public offices. This was facilitated by the professional and social links between Jewish and Polish barristers, who together formed a “Jewish-atheist clique.” According to Rola, the Polish bar was to be healed by elimination of unhealthy competition through the limitation of the general number of licensed barristers, introduction of official limits on the number of Jews in the barrister profession, and outlawing of the so-called private barristers with no formal legal education, whose members were mostly Jewish. When in 1889 the numerus clausus was officially introduced into the bar, Rola ceased to be interested in this topic. This sudden change of direction invites a suspicion that the weekly could have been inspired from the outside, while its activities were part of the persecution campaign of Jewish barristers organized by the Russian authorities.
 

A translation of a Polemic essay by Cantor Pinchas Szerman, second cantor at the Great synagogue of Warsaw. The essay discusses the many difficulties experienced by cantors in his time, especially the ones who had not be educated. In Szerman’s opinion, the only way to ease the burden – especially the financial burden – was to create a class of educated and professional cantors. The many customs of Polish Jewry that are forgotten today have been annotated as well as basic biographical data on highly influential earlier cantorial masters.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of radical assimilation in the late 19th century. The author focuses on the Markusfeld family, who had lived in Kraków since at least the mid-18th century. The study is an attempt to show the history of family against the background of the history of Galicia, in the second half of the 19th century, when the idea of integration was finally abandoned, and integration ceased to be seen as solution of “the Jewish question.” The paper is based on Bauman’s analysis of the general sociological mechanisms of modern assimilatory processes, and refers to the category of radical assimilation (T. Endelman). It seeks to answer the question of why most family members chose to convert at the end of the 19th century. The author shows that the choice of “default” religion, “universal” values, and “right” idiom was not tantamount to their affirmation – but it was a way to look for happiness and fulfillment, which was (unlike in France), according to some Jews not accessible while staying Jewish. Baptism was also a form of protection – the Second World War would prove it effective.

 Hirsch Herman Hescheles, a Jew born in Lvov, was the owner of private companies in Vienna and a philanthropist. As his life was associated with two cities – Lvov and Vienna – it was there that he decided to organize his philanthropic activities. The article is devoted to the history of the Herman Hescheles House of the Poor Israelites in Lvov, which was opened in 1896. In this house poor Jewish people of different ages and various states of health, lived over the decades, having been guaranteed accommodation. This was the only foundation of its type to operate in Lvov before World War II.
 

Article describes participation of Jewish councilors in Kraków city council and identifies political milieus where they came from. The interwar is divided in three sub-periods that were characterized by different conditions for municipal political participation. These changes influenced the composition of Jewish councilors: their political belonging and even their cooperative strategies.

 

The story “At the Outset of the Day” by S. Y. Agnon is short, but contains many meanings. It is a story about a father whose daughter’s dress burns to ashes, and who throughout the story attempts, unsuccessfully, to cover her nakedness. As the article shows, the story can be defined as symbolic, with a connotative level open to interpretation as well as biblical foundations and symbols that express its hidden level.