24 Jan 90                      JUDAIC STUDIES #29          27 Teves 50 BS"D
Connecting geographically & otherwise disparate groups with a common
interest in the study of Judaica.             Edited by Y. Greenbaum

CONTENTS

1) Jewish Family Name File
2) Dating Philo

1) Jewish Family Name File

The following is excerpted from a communication received from
David Gold. The cost is $18 per name searched, but see letter e.

From: David L. Gold <RHLH301@HAIFAUVM> Date: Tue, 02 Jan 90 10:13:32 IST

The Jewish Family Name File was established in 1968 by David L. Gold,
who is now the world's expert on the subject. The file constitutes
the largest fund of correctly etymologized Jewish family names ever
collected and is constantly growing. It also includes information
about Jewish given names and contains some Jewish family trees. D.L.G.
can also help you to hebraize family names.

In order that D.L.G. may try to answer your queries,
please submit the following information:

1. A list of all known spellings of the name (in whatever language).

2. The place for which it is earliest reported in your family (exact name
of town, city, etc. + country; just "Poland," "Russia," etc.
are not sufficient).

3. Any family lore about the origin of the name.

c. From around October to June   d. During the summer months

26 / 30 Bodenheimer St.             67-07 215 St.
35 591 Haifa                        Oakland Gardens, NY 11364-2523
Israel                              USA

f. Since much of what has been published about Jewish family names
is erroneous, you may want to ask D.L.G. for a second opinion about
the origin or meaning of your names.

g. The Jewish family trees in the file are from Lithuania and Poland.
They may be consulted free of charge. Send a list of family names
and the places for which each one has been reported.
D.L.G. will tell you whether they appear on any of the trees.

h. The Jewish Family Name File was for a short time an activity
of the Association for the Study of Jewish Languages but is now
independent of it.


2) Dating Philo

From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS  Date: Thursday, 11 January 1990 1735-EST

The attached note already appeared on HUMANIST and I have had five
requests to date.

       Philo and the Sabbath Crisis:
       Alexandrian Jewish Politics and the Dating of Philo's Works

       by Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania
       (copyright Robert A. Kraft, 4 January 1990)

          My main conclusions and their immediate ramifications are:
       Philo's negative treatments of Joseph as symbolic for the
       political person often reflect a specific set of political
       events experienced by Philo (in Egypt) and involving problematic
       actions of a Jewish political figure; Philo's positive treatment
       of Joseph as symbolic for the (Jewish?) political person was
       almost certainly written prior to the crisis reflected in the
       negative treatments; the most obvious candidate for sparking the
       negative treatment would seem to be Philo's nephew Tiberius
       Julius Alexander, who first appears in preserved sources as a
       major political figure around 42 ce and disappears from the
       sources shortly after 70 CE; if Philo is reacting to political
       activities of Tiberius Alexander, the date of the publication of
       Philo's allegorical treatises may be considerably later than
       usually has been assumed.

YG adds- Dr. Robert A. Kraft is the editor, together with George W. A.
Nickelsburg, of *Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters* (1986),
which is the subject of an interesting review by James C. VanderKam in
the October 89 issue of the Religious Studies Review.