The Play’s the Thing: Toys in Ancient Jewish Society—Visualizing through the Words of the Rabbis

Abstract Everyone plays and that, of course, includes children. In an ideal world, there would be literary traditions, archaeological remains and artistic renditions, which would enable the reconstruction of toys. Unfortunately, the situation does not exist for ancient Jewish society. For the most p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schwartz, Joshua (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2019
In: Images
Year: 2019, Volume: 12, Issue: 1, Pages: 7-19
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Abstract Everyone plays and that, of course, includes children. In an ideal world, there would be literary traditions, archaeological remains and artistic renditions, which would enable the reconstruction of toys. Unfortunately, the situation does not exist for ancient Jewish society. For the most part, there are depictions in rabbinic literature and it is those toy traditions which I examine. The study begins with those toys explicitly connected to halakhic issues, firstly with those traditions in which the toy is essential to the law and afterwards to those in which the toy is tangential to the law. The study then deals with those toys mentioned in a nonlegal rabbinic framework. Finally, I discuss toys that were popular in the Greco-Roman world but not mentioned in rabbinic literature. I seek to determine whether descriptions of toys in rabbinic literature and set within the broader Greco-Roman world are sufficient for visualization.
ISSN:1871-8000
Contains:Enthalten in: Images
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340117