Aharon Shweka

Wandering Through the Wonderland of Rabbinic Literature: Science and the Supernatural in Halakhic Writing of the Eighteenth Century

This essay examines Maoz Kahana’s A Heartless Chicken: Religion and Science in Early Modern Rabbinic Culture. Against familiar narratives that explain change in early modern Judaism primarily through rupture, conflict, and defensive retrenchment, it argues that Kahana uncovers a more expansive intellectual world in whi...