Full Description
This is a seminal study of cultural attitudes to old age among Jews of the medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. Rigorously researched and accessibly written, it will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines as well as to the broader public. While the focus is on Jewish society and culture, critical context regarding the social history of ageing is provided by comparative perspectives from the Muslim world as well as from Spain and Provence and other areas of Christian Europe that were in the Arabic Andalusian cultural orbit.
The study draws on many literary genres and scholarly disciplines: philosophy and theology, ethics and law, biblical commentary, Hebrew poetry, medical literature, and a host of marriage contracts, personal letters, and family and communal records from the Cairo Genizah. The result is a nuanced portrait of ageing as both a lived reality and a cultural paradigm in medieval Jewish society.
Contents
Introduction
I. Conceptions and Perceptions of Ageing
1. How Old Is Old?
2. Longevity and Its Limits
3. Ageing Body, Ageing Mind
II. Ageing in Family and Community
4. Grandparents and the Multigenerational Home
5. Family Networks of Care
6. Community Support
III. Ideas and Ideals of Old Age
7. The Dignity of Age
8. Facing Mortality: Towards a Hebrew Poetics of Ageing
9. The Sabbath of Life: Age and Wisdom in Medieval Jewish Thought
Appendix: Life Expectancy and Medieval Mediterranean Jewry
Afterword: On an Integrative Approach to the Study of Old Age
Bibliography
Index
