$110.00

This is the first monograph devoted to the system of community benefaction practiced by Jews in Palestine from the second century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E. Principal is the evidence from synagogue inscriptions erected to patrons and donors from the second century C.E. onwards. All these inscriptions are reviewed, together with a reexamination of how they are to be translated.

Sorek is especially interested in the motivation for benefactions, and she concludes that the Jewish system attested in the inscriptions is specific to the Jewish community. It was not merely a copy of the well-known Greco-Roman system of euergetism, in which rich citizens contributed from their wealth to public expenses. But neither was the Jewish system properly an expression of charity, as has often been thought. Sorek argues that the benefaction system is best understood as an expression of hesed, the meaning of which she explores in detail.

Susan Sorek is a Research Affiliate at the Open University, U.K.

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