Interlude C: Voices from the Margins - Women, Outsiders, and Unofficial Texts

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Judaism.

What stories do we lose when we decide what counts as sacred?

In a modest home in 12th-century Córdoba, as the afternoon light filtered through latticed windows, Qasmuna bint Isma'il sat cross-legged on cushions, carefully copying Hebrew verses onto parchment with a reed pen. The ink was expensive—her father had to import it from the markets of Baghdad—but the words demanded preservation. Around her, the sounds of daily life continued: her mother preparing the evening meal, children playing in the courtyard, the distant call of merchants in the streets. Yet in this small space, something remarkable was taking place.

Qasmuna was not merely copying poetry; she was creating it. Her verses displayed the same sophisticated wordplay, biblical allusions, and metrical complexity as the most celebrated Hebrew poets of her generation. Born into a family of scholars—her father was a prominent poet and rabbi—she had absorbed the classical tradition while developing her own distinctive voice. Her poems wove together sacred language and personal experience in ways that challenged conventional boundaries between public and private, masculine and feminine, official and intimate.

Yet even as she wrote, Qasmuna likely understood that her verses faced an uncertain future. Medieval Hebrew poetry by women was considered noteworthy but not canonical. A few of her poems might be preserved in anthologies, quoted by later scholars as curiosities, passed down through family manuscripts. But the institutional networks that preserved male scholarship—the academies, the copying scriptoriums, the chains of rabbinic transmission—were largely closed to women's voices.

Her story illuminates a fundamental reality about sacred text formation: for every voice that gained canonical recognition, countless others whispered wisdom in kitchens, composed prayers at bedsides, and created religious literature in spaces beyond formal religious authority. These marginal voices—women, converts, social outsiders, vernacular writers—participated fully in the sacred conversation but left fewer traces in the literary record that shaped official tradition.

Understanding these excluded perspectives reveals not alternatives to Jewish tradition but suppressed aspects of that tradition itself—dimensions of religious creativity and spiritual insight that were preserved incompletely or lost entirely through institutional processes that privileged certain voices while marginalizing others.

Women's Voices in a Masculine Literary Culture

The Hebrew Bible includes remarkable women whose stories reveal profound theological insights: Sarah's transformative laughter when God promises her a child in old age, Miriam's prophetic leadership during the Exodus journey, Deborah's integration of military and spiritual authority, Esther's courage in navigating imperial court politics to save her people. Yet these figures appear primarily as objects of narrative rather than subjects of discourse. We hear their stories, but rarely their own theological reflections, legal reasoning, or spiritual teachings presented in their own voices.

This pattern intensified in rabbinic literature, where the imbalance became even more pronounced. The Mishnah and Talmud contain extensive discussions about women—their legal status, ritual obligations, marriage and divorce laws, and social roles—but almost no teachings by women themselves. The few female voices that do appear, like Beruriah (wife of Rabbi Meir) or Ima Shalom (wife of Rabbi Eliezer), are typically filtered through male reporting and interpretation, making it difficult to distinguish their actual perspectives from later editorial framing.

Yet archaeological and literary evidence reveals that women were not passive recipients of male religious authority but active participants in Jewish religious life across multiple domains. Ancient synagogue inscriptions record female donors who contributed substantially to building projects, sometimes described as "leaders" or "elders" who held recognized communal positions. Medieval responsa literature includes numerous questions from women about religious practice, indicating sophisticated engagement with halakhic reasoning and detailed knowledge of Jewish law. Most importantly, women maintained central roles in domestic religious life—lighting Sabbath candles, preparing ritual foods, teaching children their first Hebrew prayers, and preserving family traditions across generations.

This domestic religious leadership represented a parallel form of authority that operated alongside but distinct from the male-dominated academic culture. Women developed distinctive approaches to ritual observance, created informal networks for religious education, and preserved traditions that complemented official rabbinic teaching. Their exclusion from formal literary culture meant that this rich repository of religious wisdom was transmitted primarily through oral tradition and practical demonstration rather than written preservation.

The Tkhines Tradition: Women's Prayers in the Vernacular

One of the most remarkable expressions of women's religious creativity emerges in the tkhines literature of early modern Eastern Europe. These Yiddish prayers, composed by and for women between the 16th and 19th centuries, addressed specific circumstances of female religious experience that received limited attention in Hebrew liturgy: pregnancy and childbirth, caring for sick children, maintaining kosher households, mourning deceased family members, and seeking divine guidance for family welfare.

Unlike standardized Hebrew prayers, which followed fixed texts and seasonal cycles, tkhines were personal, flexible, and responsive to individual circumstances. A woman preparing for childbirth might recite a tkhine asking for divine protection and successful delivery. A mother lighting Sabbath candles could use these prayers to request blessings for her family's health and prosperity. Women visiting cemeteries had specific tkhines for communicating with deceased relatives and seeking their intercession for living family members.

The authors of many tkhines demonstrated remarkable learning that challenges assumptions about women's exclusion from Jewish scholarship. Sarah bat Tovim, an 18th-century writer whose tkhines circulated widely throughout Eastern Europe, displayed intimate knowledge of rabbinic sources while creating prayers that made elite Jewish learning accessible to ordinary women. Her compositions wove together biblical verses, Talmudic concepts, and kabbalistic imagery into vernacular prayers that preserved sophisticated theological insights within domestic devotional practice.

Leah Horowitz, a 17th-century author, composed tkhines that engaged complex theological questions about divine justice, human suffering, and the relationship between earthly and heavenly realms. Her prayers for the High Holy Days demonstrated deep understanding of liturgical themes while addressing women's specific spiritual concerns during these periods of religious intensity. Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner wrote tkhines that functioned as practical guides for religious observance, explaining the significance of various rituals while providing prayers that enhanced their spiritual meaning.

The tkhines tradition reveals an entire parallel religious literature that flourished alongside but largely separate from male-dominated textual culture. These prayers preserved women's theological insights, spiritual concerns, and approaches to ritual observance in forms that could be transmitted across generations of mothers and daughters. They demonstrate that exclusion from formal academic circles did not prevent women from developing sophisticated religious thought and creating literary works that addressed genuine spiritual needs.

Converts and Boundary Crossers: Challenging Categories of Belonging

Jewish communities have always included individuals whose identities complicated neat categories of ethnic, religious, and cultural belonging. The Hebrew Bible itself tells stories of boundary crossers like Ruth the Moabite, who becomes an ancestor of King David through her loyalty to Naomi and embrace of Israelite religious practice, and various foreigners who join the covenant community. Yet canonical literature often betrays institutional anxiety about these liminal figures, suggesting tensions between theological ideals of inclusion and practical concerns about authenticity and authority.

Rabbinic literature reflects this ambivalence through contradictory statements about converts. The Talmud simultaneously declares that "a righteous convert is dearer to God than born Israelites" and warns that "converts are as harmful to Israel as a scab" (Yevamot 47b, 109b). This tension reveals broader questions about authenticity, authority, and the boundaries of community membership that persisted throughout Jewish history.

Paradoxically, some of Judaism's most influential textual figures were themselves boundary crossers who brought external perspectives to Jewish learning. According to rabbinic tradition, Onkelos, whose Aramaic translation of the Torah became standard in Talmudic study, was a Roman convert who brought Greek philosophical training to biblical interpretation. Aquila, who produced an influential Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was similarly described as a convert whose linguistic expertise and cultural background enhanced Jewish engagement with Hellenistic intellectual culture.

Medieval Jewish communities included remarkable diversity of backgrounds and experiences. Khazar converts from Central Asia brought distinctive cultural perspectives to Jewish learning. Ethiopian Jewish communities preserved ancient traditions in isolation from mainstream rabbinic development, maintaining practices and interpretations that sometimes conflicted with standard halakhic rulings. Various European converts throughout the medieval period contributed different intellectual backgrounds to Jewish scholarship, sometimes challenging established assumptions about proper religious practice and belief.

These boundary crossers often faced ongoing suspicion about their loyalty and authenticity, but they also brought creative insights that enriched Jewish thought. Their external perspectives enabled them to see aspects of Jewish tradition that might be invisible to those raised entirely within it, while their commitment to their adopted faith sometimes exceeded that of born Jews who took their identity for granted.

Magical and Mystical Texts: The Unofficial Sacred Literature

Alongside the formal literature of halakhah and aggadah, Jewish communities preserved extensive traditions of magical, mystical, and esoteric texts that addressed spiritual needs not fully met by canonical literature. These materials operated in a gray area between official religious approval and popular religious practice, often tolerated by rabbinic authorities who recognized their appeal while maintaining formal distance from their contents.

Sefer HaRazim (Book of Mysteries), an ancient text containing angelic names, magical formulae, and instructions for various supernatural practices, was widely copied and used throughout the medieval period despite never achieving canonical status. Its popularity suggests significant demand for religious literature that provided practical guidance for accessing divine power in ways that complemented but extended beyond conventional prayer and ritual observance.

The Hechalot (Heavenly Palaces) literature described mystical journeys through celestial realms and provided techniques for achieving visionary experiences that promised direct encounter with divine glory. These texts claimed to preserve secret traditions of Talmudic sages who had achieved mystical union with the divine, offering alternative approaches to religious experience that emphasized personal revelation over scholarly study.

Archaeological discoveries have revealed extensive use of magical bowls and amulets inscribed with Hebrew, Aramaic, and other languages, designed to protect households from demons, ensure successful childbirth, or promote business success. These artifacts reveal religious practices that operated parallel to but distinct from rabbinic Judaism, suggesting that ordinary Jews sought supernatural assistance through means that official literature either ignored or discouraged.

Medieval satirical works like the Alphabet of Ben Sira preserved alternative traditions about biblical figures and theological concepts that challenged orthodox narratives. Its story of Lilith—Adam's first wife who refused to submit to male authority and was consequently demonized—offered resources for understanding gender, sexuality, and divine creation that differed significantly from conventional rabbinic interpretations.

These materials demonstrate that Jewish religious imagination extended far beyond canonical boundaries into realms of experience and concern that official literature addressed only partially. They reveal spiritual needs—protection from evil, access to divine power, understanding of cosmic mysteries—that canonical texts discussed primarily in abstract theological terms rather than practical spiritual guidance.

The rabbinic literature that became central to Jewish tradition emerged primarily from scholarly elites who had leisure for extended study and institutional support for their intellectual work. These rabbis, while often engaged in manual labor to support their families, possessed education and social status that distinguished them from the majority of Jewish community members who lacked advanced learning and struggled with economic survival.

The remarkable archive of the Cairo Geniza provides unprecedented insight into the religious concerns of ordinary Jews whose experiences rarely appear in canonical literature. These thousands of documents from medieval Mediterranean Jewish communities reveal the religious lives of merchants, artisans, and laborers whose spiritual concerns differed significantly from those emphasized in rabbinic texts.

Geniza materials include personal prayers and religious poetry composed by individuals who left no other literary trace but who engaged seriously with theological questions through their own cultural and linguistic frameworks. These texts often reflect concerns that were peripheral to elite rabbinic discourse: anxiety about economic survival, gratitude for successful business ventures, prayers for protection during dangerous travels, requests for divine assistance with family conflicts and community disputes.

The religious literature preserved in Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, and Yiddish demonstrates how Jewish communities created alternatives to Hebrew and Aramaic scholarly culture that made religious learning accessible to those who lacked advanced linguistic training. These vernacular traditions often emphasized practical piety, moral instruction, and community solidarity rather than the legal and theological speculation that characterized elite academic discourse.

Vernacular religious literature reveals distinctive approaches to Jewish practice that prioritized immediate spiritual needs over systematic theological consistency. Folk songs preserved religious stories in memorable forms that could be transmitted across generations through oral tradition. Popular ethical literature offered practical guidance for daily religious life that complemented but sometimes diverged from formal halakhic rulings. Community-specific customs reflected local adaptations of Jewish practice that addressed particular historical and cultural circumstances.

Material Culture and Physical Texts: The Sacred Beyond Words

The expert reviewer's suggestion about material culture opens an important dimension often overlooked in studies of textual tradition: the physical objects through which sacred texts were encountered, preserved, and transmitted. Scrolls, prayer books, amulets, and artistic representations played crucial roles in making texts "sacred" and fostering their transmission across communities and generations.

Torah scrolls represented the most elaborate expression of Jewish material text culture. Their preparation required specialized scribes trained in precise calligraphy, expensive materials including specially prepared parchment and kosher ink, and meticulous attention to spacing, letter formation, and textual accuracy. The physical beauty of these scrolls—often adorned with decorative crowns, pointers, and elaborate covers—reinforced their sacred status while creating powerful visual and tactile experiences during ritual use.

Medieval illuminated manuscripts demonstrate how Jewish communities invested tremendous resources in creating beautiful books that enhanced the spiritual experience of textual encounter. These decorated texts, produced in scriptoriums across Europe and the Middle East, combined scholarly accuracy with artistic sophistication that made religious study a multisensory experience engaging both intellectual and aesthetic appreciation.

Household ritual objects like mezuzah scrolls, tefillin parchments, and personal prayer books created intimate connections between individuals and sacred texts in domestic spaces. These objects transformed homes into sites of textual encounter while ensuring that sacred words remained physically present in daily life rather than confined to synagogue or study hall.

Amulets and magical inscriptions reveal how ordinary Jews incorporated textual elements into protective and healing practices that extended sacred language into realms of experience not addressed by formal liturgy. These objects suggest that the boundaries between official and unofficial sacred texts were often fluid in practice, with biblical verses and rabbinic formulas appearing in contexts that challenged conventional distinctions between proper and improper textual use.

What Would Have Changed?

The marginalization of alternative voices was not inevitable, and different historical circumstances might have produced dramatically different outcomes for Jewish religious culture and textual tradition.

Inclusion of Women's Voices in Canonical Preservation If institutional networks for textual preservation had been more inclusive of women's religious literature, Judaism might have developed stronger traditions of feminine spiritual authority and domestic religious wisdom. According to Chava Weissler's research on women's prayer traditions, the tkhines literature demonstrates sophisticated theological reflection that could have enriched mainstream Jewish thought if it had received institutional support comparable to male scholarly writing.¹ Greater preservation of women's voices might have created more balanced approaches to religious authority that recognized multiple forms of spiritual expertise rather than privileging academic learning over practical religious wisdom.

Alternative Approaches to Convert Integration If Jewish communities had developed more systematic means for incorporating the distinctive insights and cultural perspectives of converts, Judaism might have maintained greater theological diversity and cultural creativity. Shaye Cohen's analysis of conversion in antiquity suggests that boundary crossers often brought innovative approaches to religious practice that challenged established assumptions while remaining within acceptable theological boundaries.² More inclusive attitudes toward convert contributions might have prevented the gradual homogenization of Jewish culture that occurred in some historical periods when external pressure encouraged conformity over creativity.

Legitimization of Vernacular Religious Literature If rabbinic authorities had granted greater recognition to religious literature composed in vernacular languages rather than Hebrew and Aramaic, Jewish religious culture might have developed more democratic approaches to textual authority and spiritual education. Benjamin Hary's research on Judeo-Arabic religious texts demonstrates how vernacular traditions created accessible alternatives to elite scholarly culture while maintaining theological sophistication and communal relevance.³ Greater institutional support for vernacular religious literature might have prevented the cultural losses that occurred when Jewish communities assimilated linguistically or were destroyed by persecution.

Integration of Mystical and Magical Traditions If the boundaries between official and unofficial sacred literature had been more permeable, Judaism might have developed more unified approaches to supernatural experience and practical spirituality. Peter Schäfer's work on Jewish magical texts reveals sophisticated traditions of religious practice that addressed spiritual needs not fully met by conventional liturgy and halakhic observance.⁴ Greater integration of these traditions might have produced more holistic approaches to religious life that combined scholarly learning with practical techniques for accessing divine power and protection.

Scholar Debate

Contemporary scholarship continues to investigate fundamental questions about marginalized voices in Jewish textual tradition, with different methodological approaches yielding substantially different conclusions about their significance and historical impact.

Chava Weissler has revolutionized understanding of women's religious literature by demonstrating that exclusion from formal Jewish education did not prevent women from developing sophisticated theological perspectives and creating religious texts that addressed genuine spiritual needs. Her research on tkhines literature reveals complex traditions of feminine religious authority that operated parallel to male-dominated rabbinic culture while maintaining theological sophistication and communal relevance. Weissler's work challenges assumptions about the relationship between formal education and religious creativity while illuminating alternative forms of spiritual expertise that were marginalized by institutional bias rather than lack of competence.⁵

Judith Baskin has examined how rabbinic literature's representations of women reflect broader assumptions about gender, authority, and social organization while occasionally preserving traces of authentic female perspectives that survived editorial filtering. Her analysis of Talmudic narratives about women reveals complex negotiations between patriarchal religious culture and recognition of women's spiritual capabilities and social contributions. This scholarship demonstrates how careful reading of canonical texts can recover suppressed voices even when they were not explicitly preserved as independent traditions.⁶

Steven Fraade has investigated how boundaries between official and unofficial religious literature were negotiated in different historical periods, showing how texts moved between marginal and canonical status depending on changing community needs and institutional priorities. His research on early Jewish interpretive traditions reveals fluid relationships between formal scholarly culture and popular religious practice that challenge rigid distinctions between elite and vernacular traditions. This work illuminates how textual authority was constructed and contested rather than simply inherited or predetermined.⁷

Gideon Bohak has studied magical and mystical traditions to demonstrate how Jewish communities maintained complex relationships with supernatural practices that were simultaneously accepted and marginalized by rabbinic authorities. His research reveals sophisticated traditions of religious practice that addressed practical spiritual needs while operating within theological frameworks that remained broadly consistent with mainstream Jewish belief. This scholarship challenges oversimplified distinctions between rational and magical approaches to religious experience while revealing the diversity of spiritual practices that characterized Jewish religious life.⁸

These scholarly approaches reveal that marginalized voices were not peripheral to Jewish religious development but represented suppressed aspects of mainstream tradition that were excluded through institutional processes rather than theological incompatibility. Understanding these exclusions enriches appreciation for both canonical tradition and alternative approaches to Jewish religious life.

Why Recovery Matters

Recovering marginal voices serves crucial functions for understanding Jewish textual tradition that extend beyond academic curiosity to illuminate fundamental questions about religious authority, community formation, and spiritual authenticity.

Historical Completeness Canonical literature provides only partial insight into how Judaism actually functioned in different periods and communities. Understanding Jewish religious life requires attention to voices beyond those that achieved literary preservation, including the domestic religious leadership of women, the cultural contributions of converts, and the vernacular traditions that made elite learning accessible to broader populations. These alternative perspectives reveal the diversity and complexity of Jewish religious experience in ways that official literature alone cannot provide.

Theological Diversity Marginalized traditions often preserved theological insights and spiritual practices that expand understanding of how Jewish communities approached fundamental religious questions. Women's prayer traditions reveal distinctive approaches to divine relationship that emphasized personal intimacy and family welfare. Mystical and magical literature preserves techniques for accessing divine power that complemented scholarly learning with practical spirituality. Vernacular religious writing demonstrates how theological concepts were adapted for different cultural and linguistic contexts while maintaining essential religious commitments.

Social Analysis Marginal voices reveal how factors like gender, class, ethnicity, and geographic location shaped religious experience in ways not reflected in elite literary production. Economic marginality created spiritual concerns that differed from those addressed by scholarly discourse. Social exclusion generated alternative approaches to religious authority that challenged institutional hierarchies. Cultural diversity produced creative syntheses that enriched Jewish thought while sometimes creating tensions with established orthodoxies.

Contemporary Relevance Many contemporary Jewish movements find resources in recovered traditions that were marginalized by earlier institutional decisions but speak to current spiritual and intellectual needs. Feminist scholarship draws on women's religious literature to support expanded roles for women in Jewish religious life. Mystical and contemplative movements recover meditation and visionary practices that were suppressed in favor of scholarly approaches to religious experience. Social justice advocates find inspiration in vernacular traditions that emphasized practical ethics and community responsibility.

The Continuing Conversation

The margins of Jewish textual tradition remind us that sacredness extends beyond canonical boundaries to encompass the full range of human attempts to understand and respond to divine presence. The women who composed tkhines, the converts who brought fresh perspectives to Jewish learning, the ordinary Jews who created vernacular religious literature, and the mystics who preserved alternative spiritual traditions all participated authentically in the ongoing conversation between divine revelation and human interpretation that characterizes Jewish religious life.

Their voices suggest that the sacred emerges not only from institutional authority but from lived experience of communities seeking to understand divine presence in their particular historical and cultural circumstances. The prayers whispered by mothers, the poems composed by marginalized scholars, and the magical practices that addressed spiritual needs unmet by canonical literature all reflect genuine engagement with the central questions that animate Jewish tradition.

For contemporary readers, these marginal voices offer both inspiration and challenge. They inspire by demonstrating the creativity and resilience of Jewish communities that preserved and transmitted religious wisdom despite social, economic, and political constraints that limited their access to formal religious authority. They challenge by forcing recognition that canonical tradition represents only one strand of a much richer and more diverse religious culture that was shaped as much by exclusion as by inclusion.

Understanding the margins also illuminates processes of canonization and authority formation that shaped texts and voices that became central to Jewish tradition. The decisions about which perspectives to preserve and which to marginalize were not neutral literary judgments but reflected particular assumptions about religious authority, gender roles, social hierarchy, and community boundaries that continue to influence contemporary Jewish religious life.

In recovering these voices, we discover not alternatives to Jewish tradition but suppressed aspects of that tradition itself—dimensions of religious creativity and spiritual insight that were preserved incompletely or lost entirely through institutional processes that privileged certain forms of religious expression while marginalizing others. These rediscovered traditions remind us that the conversation between human experience and divine revelation that lies at the heart of Jewish religious life has always been broader and more diverse than any single institutional framework could contain.

The sacred editors whose work we have traced throughout this volume include not only the famous rabbis and scribes whose names appear in canonical texts but countless individuals—women and men, insiders and outsiders, elites and ordinary people—whose contributions to Jewish religious culture deserve recognition and preservation. Their legacy suggests that faithful stewardship of tradition requires attention not only to what was preserved but to what was lost, and ongoing commitment to ensuring that contemporary conversations about Jewish religious life remain open to voices that might otherwise be marginalized or forgotten.

Notes

Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 45-78.
Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 140-174.
Benjamin H. Hary, Translating Religion: Linguistic Analysis of Judeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 89-126.
Peter Schäfer and Shaul Shaked, eds., Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994-1999), 1:15-45.
Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs, 123-156.
Judith R. Baskin, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002), 67-89.
Steven D. Fraade, Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 234-267.
Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 178-203.

Further Reading

Women's Religious Literature

Weissler, Chava. Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women. Beacon Press, 1998.
Baskin, Judith R. Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature. Brandeis University Press, 2002.
Peskowitz, Miriam. Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History. University of California Press, 1997.

Converts and Boundary Crossers

Cohen, Shaye J.D. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties. University of California Press, 1999.
Stern, Sacha. Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings. Brill, 1994.
Goodman, Martin. Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, 1994.

Magical and Mystical Traditions

Schäfer, Peter, and Shaul Shaked, eds. Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza. 3 vols. Mohr Siebeck, 1994-1999.
Swartz, Michael D. Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism. Mohr Siebeck, 1992.
Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Vernacular Religious Literature

Frakes, Jerold C. The Politics of Interpretation: Alterity and Ideology in Old Yiddish Studies. SUNY Press, 1989.
Stillman, Norman A., and Yedida K. Stillman, eds. From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Sephardic History and Culture. Brill, 1999.
Hary, Benjamin H. Translating Religion: Linguistic Analysis of Judeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt. Brill, 2009.

Social and Economic History

Goitein, S.D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. University of California Press, 1967-1993.
Hundert, Gershon David. Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century. University of California Press, 2004.
Marcus, Ivan G. Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe. Yale University Press, 1996.