Judaism Books
Indiana University Press Pius XII the Holocaust and the Cold War
Book SynopsisAn account of the controversial actions of Pius XII, the man whom some have called "Hitler's Pope", and the Vatican during Europe's darkest years.Trade ReviewPhayer's text reads like a riveting suspense novel—filled with intrigue, conspiracy, and money laundering. . . . The so-called Pius Wars will not end with this book, but Phayer makes a welcome addition to the debate. . . . Recommended. * Choice *This is an impressive study, which uses the new documentation in a judicious manner to develop credible reinterpretations of papal policy during the war and after. . . . The book makes a particularly valuable and original contribution . . . March 2009 * The International History Review *The new material that Phayer has brought to light from the National Archives offers a useful contribution to our understanding of the controversial relationship between the Vatican and the perpetrators of the Holocaust, expecially in the postwar period. April 2009 * American Historical Review *Michael Phayer has made excellent use of newly released archival material in his study of Pope Pius XII. May 2009 * German Studies Review *Unlike several passionate recent studies of Pius XII . . . Phayer makes every effort at scholarly restraint and caution. But, in the end, his careful effort produces powerful evidence that will likely add significantly to the controversy surrounding the pope . . . Certainly anyone interested in this fascinating, important, and disturbing topic must read this book.Volume 43, 2010 * Central European History *Table of ContentsContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Eugenio Pacelli: 1900 to 19422. The Genocides of Polish Catholics and Polish Jews3. Pius XII's 1942 Christmas Message: Genocide Decried4. 1943: Pius XII Reverses Course5. Papal Capitalism during World War II6. The First Cold War Warrior7. The Origin of the Vatican Ratlines8. Bishop Hudal's Ratline9. Looted Gold and the Vatican10. Ante Pavelic: War Criminal, Murderer, and Defender of the Faith11. The Biggest Ratline12. An Obsession with CommunismNotesBibliographyIndex
£22.49
Indiana University Press From Metaphysics to Midrash
Book SynopsisExplores the exegetical tradition of Isaac Luria and his followers within the historical context in 16th-century Safed, a community that brought practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into close contact with one another. This title suggests that Luria and his followers were far from cloistered.Trade ReviewShaul Magid has written a bold and intriguing book that should be stimulating to scholars of Jewish literature and intellectual thought. Utilizing five Scriptural narratives—one from each book of the Chumash—Magid shows how Lurianic Kabbalists imposed their own particular mystical interpretation on Scripture. Reconstructing the Lurianic Kabbalists' exegesis, he argues that their reading of Scripture linked contemporary sociological issues with metaphysical themes. Their most compelling societal issue was a preoccupation with the question of the conversos who wished to re-enter Judaism and the Jewish community. Their metaphysical preoccupation was the presence of Evil in a world that Torah proclaimed, "And God saw all that He had Made, and behold it was very good." Both these themes concerned a concept of "the Other." Each of the Scriptural narratives that Magid presents is a case study of the Other. In Genesis, Magid presents the Lurianic interpretation of Adam's sin as a way to introduce their view of Evil; in Exodus, he examines the Lurianic exegesis of the erev rav, the minority of non-Jews who accompanied the Jews out of Egypt, and who were responsible, according to some rabbinic interpretations, for the sin of the golden calf. In Leviticus, he discusses the prohibition against male homosexuality. In Numbers, Balaam is presented as the Other in contrast to Moses. And in Deuteronomy, the Torah as authoritative text is the Other when juxtaposed with the authority that is vested in the person Moses. In each case study, the Other turns out to be not a true other but a complement—part of a duality that is necessary for certain historical and metaphysical processes to complete their mission. Magid notes that making the Other (always ontologically impure) part of one's self is a paradoxical move for a religion that proclaims its special election as a "people apart," and who live lives of distinctiveness and separation. Magid explains that Lurianic thinkers can incorporate the impure into the pure because they hold a worldview that "all things contain their opposite; consequently, all otherness is only a temporary instantiation of the self." Chapters One and Two provide readers enough background information to understand the assumptions of Lurianic Kabbala. Magid introduces the notion of the sephirot, entities that, depending on what kabbalistic system one studies, are alternatively regarded as building blocks of the universe or aspects of God (often characterized as the entities that constitute the personality of God). In the Lurianic system, there is a reciprocal relationship—an ebb and flow—between the actions of people and the sephirot: the smallest movement in one realm effects the entire configuration of the other realm. Thus, the sephirot and creation are ontologically and cosmologically seamless. Adding to this seamlessness is the notion of soul inheritance (gilgul), which is a kind of recycling of souls into other souls. In the case study on Adam's sin, the system works in the following way: the sephirot that constitute primal Adam sin with the primal serpent, resulting in a spiritual or metaphysical blot on the soul. This blot is transmitted to the earthly Adam who passes it along to Cain and Abel. As Magid explains: "More than being born after the sin, here Cain and Abel are born in or as a result of the sin. They do not merely inherit the sin but essentially are the sin. This affects their diminished soul construction and foreshadows their sinful behavior and the behavior of their soul progeny: the generation of the flood, of Babel, and of Sodom. Those born from Adam's 130 years of spilled seed culminates in Jacob and his family's descent to Egypt (Jacob being prefigured in Adam) resulting in the generation of Egypt . . . and the birth of Moses (prefigured as Seth)." For the Kabbalists, each stage of history is regarded as an opportunity to "repair" the sin of previous generations. This latent potential is called tikkun. In fact, the potential is always only partially fulfilled. Full success is only possible in messianic time. This pattern provides the kabbalists with an answer to the problem of Evil: we are diminished by evil (a notion, by the way, already found in the Talmud, e.g., Chagiga 12a) but we strive towards total redemption. The metaphysical "Other" (evil) turns out to be a necessary and unavoidable component of the structure of the universe. Ultimately, there is no real notion of otherness because Evil is an intrinsic part of creation and an essential part of the creation of Man with roots in the divine itself. Magid also connects the story of Adam's sin to the societal issue of the status of conversos. According to his thesis, the kabbalist's version of creation and sin allows the converso, "burdened with the weight of sin from birth," to understand that his situation is "rooted in the highest realms of the cosmic world." Reconversion is simply another narrative of cosmic tikkun. Magid never claims that sixteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalists were adjudicating questions of whether coversos were Jews: "[W]hat I am doing is linking the historical fact with a particular literary trope as it appears in Lurianic exegesis and am suggesting how one may have informed the other." The book also illustrates how this "taming" of the Other works in Lurianic Kabbala's understanding of the role of the erev rav, the reality of male homosexuals, Balaam, and the transformation in Deuteronomy of text as the sole authority for a people who no longer have direct access to the person Moses. In a fascinating comparison of the Christian notion of incarnation (the divine became human in order that the human might become divine), Magid suggests that studying Torah triggers the divine in man: "The divine text (as divine names) and the zelem elohim [the image of God] in the human (also comprised of divine names according to these kabbalists) become activated through the engagement of text and person in the performance of study." The identification of text and person is a Jewish version of incarnation. From Metaphysics to Midrash is rich in intriguing discussions about the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews, good and evil, God and man from the perspective of Lurianic Kabbalah's interpretation of Scripture. -- Michael Nutkiewicz * SHOFAR *Shaul Magid has written a bold . . . book. . . . From Metaphysics to Midrash is rich in intriguing discussions about the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews, good and evil, God and man from the perspective of Lurianic Kabbalah's interpretation of Scripture.Vol. 28, No. 1 Fall 2009 -- Michael Nutkiewicz * Religious Studies Program,University of New Mexico *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Kabbala, New Historicism, and the Question of BoundariesThe Lurianic Myth: A Playbill1. Genesis "And Adam's Sin Was (Very) Great": Original Sin in Lurianic Exegesis2. Exodus The "Other" Israel: The Erev Rav (Mixed Multitude) as Conversos3. Leviticus The Sin of Becoming a Woman: Male Homosexuality and the Castration Complex4. Numbers Balaam, Moses, and the Prophecy of the "Other": A Lurianic Vision for the Erasure of Difference5. Deuteronomy The Human and/as God: Divine Incarnation and the "Image of God"ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£29.45
Indiana University Press Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life
Book SynopsisQuestions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century - Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas - to help the author reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. This work explains the leading ideas of each of these great thinkers.Trade ReviewOne of the most distinguished analytical philosophers, Putnam has written an unusual book that uses the thought of key philosophers to find points of commonality between the religious and the philosophical. October 1, 2008 * Library Journal *Hilary Putman has been in the thick of philosophical discussion for more than half a century . . . engagingly personal . . . there are interesting, characteristically Putnamian insights to be had throughout.November 7, 2008 -- Abraham Socher * Times Literary Supplement *In yoking Jewish thought to his efforts to give philosophy a human face, and in giving us glimpses of three men who helped shape a vibrant and beautiful form of Jewish thought, Hilary Putnam—to his profit, and to ours—has sided with Isaiah.October 2008 * FIRST THINGS *. . . Putnam has . . . discovered a barely contemplated terrain, where American pragmatism and Continental Jewish existentialism are happily intermarried. Mazel tov.Volume 15, Number 2 (rec'd 6/09) -- Michael Fagenblat * Common Knowledge *Philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, examines the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century—Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas—to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. . . . Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life.Vol. 28.1 Fall 2009 -- Joseph Haberer * Book Editor *Written by the distinguished emeritus professor of analytical philosophy, this intriguing little study is a concise presentation of three figures in modern Jewish thought: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas.Vol. 33/2 * AJS Review *Putnam is a master teacher, and his elucidations of four difficult thinkers are valuable in themselves.Vol. 28, No. 3, 2010 * Shofar *Putnam succeeds in his goals of introducing Anglo-American philosophers to some of the 'post-modernist' philosophy of Judaism; and of providing a reminder of a central task of philosophy as a directional guide for living a worthwhile life. * Studies in Religion *Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas are for Putnam the great Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century. As their thought has intrigued him in his struggle with his Jewish heritage, he wrote this slim volume to 'help a reader who is struggling with these difficult authors to understand their difficult and spiritually deep writings.'72 Winter/Spring 2010 * Menorah Review *Table of ContentsContentsPrefaceIntroduction (Autobiographical)1. Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein2. Rosenzweig on Revelation and Romance3. What I and Thou Is Really Saying4. Levinas on What Is Demanded of UsAfterword Notes
£18.04
University of Notre Dame Press Canonization of the Synagogue Service The
Book SynopsisLawrence A. Hoffman's inquiry into the reasons for the canonization of the Jewish style synagogue service between the eighth and eleventh centuries presents a novel reinterpretation of the available evidence that will have repercussions for studies of Jewish and Christian liturgy. The author suggests that Babylonian Jewish authorities attempted to fix Jewish liturgy during the height of the geonic period (c. 750-1025 A. D.) in response to changing social and economic conditions, and that this period, customarily considered as a whole, should be divided instead into three distinct eras. Because the changing attitude toward liturgical canonization during this period reflects the Jewish community's self-perception and its view of other groups with whom it dealt, Professor Hoffman's findings cast fresh light on such important matters as the Karaite schism and the condition of the medieval Palestinian community. In addition, many of the ancient liturgical alternatives discussed provide esseTrade Review" ... a well-written and highly intelligent book... a truly compendious and thorough account of the subject. The work is carried out in reverent detail. It is a truly formidable treatment of an important subject." —Journal of Jewish Studies"Hoffman's book is bound to become a classic in the field of Jewish liturgy...highly recommended to all students of liturgy and religion." —Journal of the American Academy of Religion
£20.69
University of Notre Dame Press Religion and State in the American Jewish
Book SynopsisThis text focuses on what it means to be Jewish in America and the different positions held within the Jewish community on past and present church-state issues - whether Orthodox Jews in the military should wear yarmulkes while in uniform - and if Jewish prisoners have a right to Kosher food.Trade Review“Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience justifies itself as offering a fresh view on how American Jews have situated themselves on the emotional issues surrounding church-state relations in the United States.” —Journal of Church and State
£25.19
University of Notre Dame Press Sacred Sound and Social Change
Book SynopsisTeachers, students, composers, performers, and other practitioners of sacred sound will appreciate this volume because, unlike any book currently available on sacred music, it treats the history, development, current practices, composition, and critical views of the liturgical music of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Contributors trace Jewish music from its place in Hebrew Scriptures through the nineteenth-century Reform movement. Similar accounts of Christian music describe its growth up to the Protestant Reformation, as well as post-Reformation development. Other essays explore liturgical music in contemporary North America by analyzing it against the backdrop of the continuous social change that characterizes our era.Trade Review“Liturgical musicians should consider adding [Sacred Sound and Social Change] to their libraries. Each critical aspect of music is considered. As society continues to change and social pressures intensify, music will continue to play its critical role. This book gives us a chance to reflect upon where we’ve been, where we are, and where we may be going.” —Modern Liturgy * Modern Liturgy *"Following two excellent collections examining the development of Judaism and Christianity, this third volume in this series traces the usages of music in the two faiths, from biblical origins and medieval developments to current practices, while analyzing the varieties of music within each tradition." —Journal of Ecumenical Studies"The editors sought to bring diverse voices to the discussion. Their treatment of Jewish and Christian traditions within the same volume is significant; since both musical traditions stem from common sources and deal with similar social forces today, common reflection can lead to greater insight." —Theological Studies"This book reveals profound thought about the function of music in liturgy. All church and synagogue musicians should read it." —Choice
£28.80
University of Notre Dame Press Sacrifice Scripture and Substitution
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays focuses on sacrifice in the context of Jewish and Christian scripture and is inspired by the thought and writings of René Girard. The contributors engage in a dialogue with Girard in their search for answers to key questions about the relation between religion and violence. The book is divided into two parts. The first opens with a conversation in which René Girard and Sandor Goodhart explore the relation between imitation and violence throughout human history, especially in religious culture. It is followed by essays on the subject of sacrifice contributed by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, including Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, Louis Feldman, Michael Fishbane, Erich Gruen, and Alan Segal. The second part contains essays on specific scriptural texts (Abraham''s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 and the book of Job in the Jewish tradition, the Gospel and Epistles in the Christian tradition). The authors explore new ways of applyinTrade Review"In increasing numbers, scholars are turning to the mimetic theory espoused by René Girard for answers to key questions about religion and violence. For the first time, the editors of this volume place in conversation with each other scholars who, from the perspective of Christian and Jewish traditions and scholarship, engage via mimetic theory the sacrificial and anti-sacrificial features of ancient Judaism and early Christianity and explore their subsequent trajectories." —Martha Reineke, University of Northern Iowa"A distinctive contribution of this volume is the focus of many of its essays on Judaism and Jewish readings of the Hebrew Bible. Girard's Christian focus has left his thought open to the criticism that it is a recycled form of supersessionism. Though I do not think that this book will put that issue completely to rest, its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish thinkers is welcome and an important advance." —James W. Watts, Syracuse University"This volume first presents a 'conversation' between R. Girard and Goodhart on mimesis, sacrifice, and the Bible. Then it presents twenty essays on specific scriptural texts." —New Testament Abstracts“This important book consists of twenty-one essays that are knowing, critical, and venturesome. . . . The intent of the collection is to understand better the ancient relationship of Judaism and Christianity. The accent of the volume, variously explored, expanded, appreciated, and in small ways critiqued, is the work of René Girard, to whom, along with his wife, the book is dedicated.” —Journal of Ecumenical Studies“The introduction . . . expounds René Girard’s theory that every culture is founded on the collective murder of a surrogate victim. . . . In Girard’s view, the Hebrew Bible reflects a profoundly anti-sacrificial development, and Christianity extends it by positing Jesus’ sacrifice as the supreme sacrifice that ends all sacrifices. . . . This volume . . . puts his theory at work, in two main ways, to which the two parts of the book are devoted.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review“The ground-breaking work of René Girard on the theme of violence and mimesis in religion is the inspiration for this collection of twenty-one essays. The impact of Girard’s thinking is particularly felt in biblical studies, as this volume demonstrates. The first nine essays address some aspect of biblical sacrifice itself; the rest focus on explicit biblical passages that treat the topic. . . . This is a very readable treatment of an important yet unresolved topic.” —The Bible Today“. . . ultimately, this book serves as an excellent introductory conversation into mimetic theory and sacrifice. This collection of essays is a good starting point for a beginning student, but also will function as a tool for the researcher.” —Religious Studies Review
£31.50
University of Notre Dame Press Converts Heretics and Lepers
Book SynopsisJames Diamond''s new book consists of a series of studies addressing Moses Maimonides'' (11381204) appropriation of marginal figureslepers, converts, heretics, and othersnormally considered on the fringes of society and religion. Each chapter focuses on a type or character that, in Maimonides'' hands, becomes a metaphor for a larger, more substantive theological and philosophical issue. Diamond offers a close reading of key texts, such as the Guide of the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah, demonstrating the importance of integrating Maimonides'' legal and philosophical writings.Converts, Heretics, and Lepers fills an important void in Jewish studies by focusing on matters of exegesis and hermeneutics as well as philosophical concerns. Diamond''s alternative reading of central topics in Maimonides suggests that literary appreciation is a key to deciphering Maimonides'' writings in particular and Jewish exegetical texts in general.Trade Review“Diamond takes a linguistic pebble and throws it into the sea of Maimonides' thought, following the ripples where they lead: verses connect to verses and to rabbinic glosses upon them, which in turn lead to further exegetical and philosophical ripples. In addition to being an extraordinarily learned and careful reader, and in addition to being a deep thinker, James A. Diamond is also a fine craftsperson of the English language-the book is a joy to read.” —Shofar “This richly detailed book presents a fascinating study of the way Moses Maimonides, the supreme medieval Jewish philosopher, uses marginal figures to define broader philosophical issues. . . . For this study Diamond draws equally on Maimonides' philosophical writings and on his halakhic (legal) writings, demonstrating the interplay between these genres. This examination of figures on the margins provides a filter to allow Maimonides to explore ideal characteristics in a unique way.” —Congregational Libraries Today“. . . James A. Diamond presents a refreshing, if somewhat unconventional, approach to Maimonidean interpretation, which, if integrated with the prevailing philological contextualization, will undoubtedly lead to fruitful conclusions as to the intentions of the Guide.” —Speculum“In this remarkable book, James A. Diamond continues his project of close and sensitive readings of the Maimonidean corpus. Taking the Rambam at his word in the introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed, Diamond leads us into the inner recesses of that and other works to revel in the master’s religious and poetic artistry, thereby revealing something of the hidden desires and fractures in Maimonides’ positioning of philosophy vis-à-vis religion.” —H-Judaic“James Diamond's book about Maimonides is a welcome addition to the regular stream of books about the thinker Jews have rightly called ‘the great eagle.’ His unique contribution to the Maimonidean literature is to show that the true Jewish philosopher like Maimonides is always an outsider in ordinary Jewish thought, and he is thus uniquely able to appreciate and explicate what Jews and other worshipers of the One God have to learn from other outsiders like himself.” —David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto". . . a series of extraordinarily close readings of core texts of Maimonides', readings which illuminate the delicate interplay of philosophical and religious ideas in Maimonides. In his previous work, Diamond convincingly illustrated the way in which Maimonides carefully chooses, subtly interprets, and circumspectly weaves together rabbinic materials to address philosophers and talmudists alike, each in their own idiom. This book is a further expression of Diamond's mastery of this intricate methodology and is a work to be studied and re-studied. All students of Maimonides are in his debt." —Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa“Converts, Heretics, and Lepers is a very sophisticated exploration of Maimonidean religious philosophy. Although there have been numerous studies on Maimonides, perhaps more than any other Jewish thinker, James Diamond manages to approach the master from fresh perspectives. The result is a stunningly lucid and deep engagement with Maimonides.” —Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
£35.10
University of Notre Dame Press Evil and Exile
Book SynopsisTwo interviews have been added to this second edition, in which Wiesel discusses religious faith in the face of evil and love, the moral responsibilities of Jews and non-Jews, the plight of the exiled, Jewish-Christian relations, antisemitism, and mystery and the ineffable.Trade Review"God may be unjust but is never indifferent, speculates Wiesel in these brilliant, intense interviews conducted in 1987 with French journalist de Saint-Cheron. The eminent Holocaust scholar and novelist ranges widely over Jewish-Christian relations, anti-Semitism, politics, Hasidism and Jewish thought". —Publishers Weekly“Throughout this book, Wiesel's understanding of the human condition offers both an honest assessment and also hope that we may learn to live with one another in harmony.” —The Jewish Book News“Saint Cheron probes deeply, asking searching questions about evil, responsibility, faith, and the meaning of life as well as addressing topics of current political import. Wiesel responds passionately, offering many penetrating, personal comments.” —Library Journal"Two themes dominate this book: change and meaning. These form the context of six days of questions posed by Saint Cheron to Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Contained here are probably the most comprehensive statements that Wiesel has ever made on Jewish theology, although he labels it as tradition (thought and quest) as distinguished from the more formalized theology of Christianity." —Spirituality Today“M. de Saint Cheron has come with questions only about evil, a universal problem , and exile, an endemically Jewish question, but also about the whole gamut of Jewish existence, past, present, and future…. As a result, the reader is fortunate to share Mr. Wiesel’s thoughts. It is a privilege to see the breadth of his Jewish involvement, commitment, and understanding. It is almost awesome as he talks of his activities, writings, and experience.” —Science and Technology“His [Wiesel] thoughts on evil, love, responsibility, life, death and Judeo-Christian relations as well as his comments on the extermination of over six million Jews give testimony to his own deep belief in God. Michaël de Saint Cheron's insightful questions expand the interviews to a deeper discussion of Wiesel's writings, his comments on the writings of such authors as Unamuno, Kafka, and Mauriac, and his interpretations of the scriptures. Evil and Exile is a most powerful book recommended for students of Wiesel and all readers who are concerned with the defense of human rights. —Charles Snyder, Church and Synagogue Library Assn.“It will not be long before readers come to realize that like Dante and Balzac, Wiesel is the creator of a comprehensive, unified oeuvre that reveals the path taken by an intellect - in the face of unprecedental odds - trying to travel toward God at the same time it tries to reach an understanding of man. One of the pleasures in reading Wiesel is the feeling one gets of being engaged in conversation with a warm human being. The tension created by this contradiction is one of the things that makes this book so interesting. What makes it indepensible is the way Wiesel chooses to respond. —Hadassah Magazine“Wiesel offers wise counsel in this volume concerning evil and suffering, life, and death, chance and circumstance.” —Times Outlook Magazine
£20.69
University of Notre Dame Press Philos Portrayal of Moses in the Context of
Book SynopsisPhilo''s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism presents the most comprehensive study of Philo''s De Vita Mosis that exists in any language. Feldman, well known for his work on Josephus and ancient Judaism, here paves new ground using rabbinic material with philological precision to illuminate important parallels and differences between Philo''s writing on Moses and rabbinic literature. One way in which Hellenistic culture marginalized Judaism was by exposing the apparent defects in Moses'' life and character. Philo''s De Vita Mosis is a counterattack to these charges and is a vital piece of his attempt to reconcile Judaism and Hellenism. Feldman rigorously examines the text and shows how Philo presents a narrative of Moses''s life similar to that of a mythical divine and heroic figure, glorifying his birth, education, and virtues. Feldman demonstrates that Philo is careful to explain in a scientific way those portions of the Bible, particularly miTrade Review“This book is a study of Philo’s De Vita Mosis, Feldman, well known for his work on Josephus and ancient Judaism, here uses rabbinic material to illuminate important parallels and differences between Philo’s writing on Moses and rabbinic literature. . . . Feldman shows how Philo glorifies the birth, education, and virtues of Moses and demonstrates that Philo is careful to explain in a scientific way those portions of the Bible, particularly miracles, that appear incredible to his skeptical Hellenistic readers.” —Shofar * Shofar *“While focusing on Philo's De vita Mosis, Feldman . . . attempts to place Philo's portrait on Moses in the context of what other Jews and non-Jews in antiquity said about him . . . Feldman concludes that Philo intended De vita Mosis primarily for non-Jews in order to answer the misunderstandings, disparagement, and maligning of Moses; and that he presented Moses as a philosopher king but objected strongly to the view of Moses as divine.” —New Testament Abstracts“Feldman’s intention is to produce a comprehensive, systematic account of the depiction of Moses by Philo, chiefly by Philo’s De Vita Mosis (Mos.). In this, he succeeds. He organizes his work in imitation of Mos.: part one proceeds chronologically through the life of Moses; part two he organizes topically around ‘virtues’ of Moses, as does Philo.” —Bulletin for Biblical Research“Feldman shows how Philo presents an aretalogy similar to that of a mythical divine and heroic figure by glorifying the birth, education, and virtues of Moses. He demonstrates that Philo is careful to explain in a scientific way those portions of the Bible, particularly miracles, that appear incredible to his skeptical Hellenistic readers. Moses, as presented by Philo, emerges as unique among ancient law givers.” —International Review of Biblical Studies“This book is a gold mine of information. In two sections that follow the arrangement of Philo's two treatises on the life of Moses, Feldman expertly sets forth an impressive array of material from Philo, other Jewish sources, and non-Jewish sources. Each section on the life of Moses and on his virtues is clearly and helpfully organized into many subsections, and Feldman discusses each topic with characteristic erudition. This is the first book-length study to focus on these Philonic and other traditions about Moses, and readers from a variety of disciplines will find much here to appreciate.” —Ellen Birnbaum, author of The Place of Judaism in Philo's Thought: Israel, Jews, and Proselytes“Feldman provides a characteristically thorough, even exhaustive, discussion of Philo's Life of Moses, informed by his unsurpassed knowledge of both Jewish and classical literature. This is a very substantial and welcome contribution to the detailed analysis of the major Jewish philosopher of antiquity.” —John J. Collins, Yale Divinity School“This book represents the first full-length treatment of Philo’s portrait of Moses in the De vita Moysis. The work is erudite and careful. As is characteristic of Professor Feldman’s work as a whole, the strongest quality of this book is it comprehensive nature and encyclopedic learning. It will appeal to a significant number of scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines, including Second Temple Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, New Testament, and the Early Church.” —Gregory E. Sterling, associate professor of theology, University of Notre Dame
£87.55
University of Notre Dame Press Hellenism in the Land of Israel
Book SynopsisThe variety of ways in which Jews in Israel responded to and appropriated Greek culture is the subject of this volume. The contributors provide corroborating evidence of the influence of Greek culture in Judea and Galilee, from before the Maccabean revolt on into the rabbinic period.Trade Review“[A] formidable collection of the leading scholars in the field. Anyone interested in the intercultural interplay between Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity should own this fine collection of well-written and highly accessible essays.” —Choice“. . . As a whole, the book has as its principal focus the issues of acculturation, assimilation, adaptation, inculturation and implicitly ethnic aspects, which are presented by the contributors in a highly professional way, advancing by a step some hitherto neglected or inadequately analysed details.” —Ancient West & East“In reviewing the articles in the present volume, it would be impossible to do justice to each and every one. All are deserving of careful study, and each expands our horizons with respect to the topic in question. For furthering our awareness and understanding of this important phenomenon in ancient Judaism, we are profoundly indebted to the organizers of this conference, who also produced this most impressive volume of studies. This book is a must for anyone interested in investigating this most central topic in the study of ancient Jewish society.” —Journal of Biblical Literature“This important collection continues the work of discussing how and to what degree the Jews were Hellenized and a part of the Hellenistic world.” —Journal for the Study of the Old Testament“. . . Superb collection . . . Authors constitute a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of Hellenistic Jewish scholars. . . .[F]ully indexed and carefully crafted, this volume is essential reading for those with a serious interest in the Hellenistic world.” —Religious Studies Review
£17.99
University of Notre Dame Press Redefining FirstCentury Jewish and Christian
Book SynopsisFor nearly four decades, E. P. Sanders has been the foremost scholar in shaping and refocusing scholarly debates in three different but related disciplines in New Testament studies: Second Temple Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Pauline studies. This collection of essays by an impressive array of colleagues and former students presents original scholarship that extendsor departs fromthe research of Sanders himself. Both apologists and dissenters find their place in this volume, as the authors actively debate Sanders's innovative positions on central issues in all three disciplines. The introductory group of essays includes a substantive intellectual autobiography by E. P. Sanders himself. The next three parts examine in turn the three areas in which Sanders made his important contributions. The essays in part 2 engage Sanders''s notion of common Judaism. Those in part 3 deal with issues that Sanders raised respecting the historical Jesus and the Gospels. And the essays in part 4 Trade Review“This volume is a fitting tribute to the single most influential scholar in the fields of New Testament and early Judaism of the last half century. . . . A real strength of this volume is that most of the essays not only directly engage the work of Ed Parish Sanders but confirm, refine, and even extend various aspects of his innovative and widely debated positions on central issues in the study of Jesus, Paul, and Second Temple Judaism.” —Daniel C. Harlow, Calvin College“No scholar of our generation has done more to advance the study of the New Testament than E. P. Sanders, whose work has revolutionized our understanding of early Judaism, the historical Jesus, and the apostle Paul. These are three enormously significant areas of research; most good scholars need an entire career to master, let alone influence, any one of them. The present collection of essays by leading researchers of early Judaism and early Christianity—including an insightful intellectual autobiography by the great man himself—is a fitting tribute to the career and thought of a giant in the field.” —Bart D. Ehrman, James A. Gray Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“A celebratory testimonial to the far-ranging interests of the most influential intertestamental historian of our age, this stellar, seminal, stimulating compendium—one exciting essay on the heels of another—is a veritable ‘scholarly page-turner.’ Gloriously rich in content, provocatively diverse in perspective, and brilliant in categorization and sequence, this volume will be indispensable to all of E. P. Sanders' followers and reactors as well as to present and future newcomers to his distinctive contributions.” —Michael J. Cook, Sol & Arlene Bronstein Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion“This volume is a tribute to Professor Ed Parish Sanders of Duke University, who is one of the foremost biblical scholars on the topic of the relationship of Judaism and early Christianity. A thread that binds together Sanders' work and is apparent in most of these essays is his fundamental contention that running through the midst of the cultural and theological diversity of first-century Judaism there was also a “common Judaism” expressed in some fundamental convictions and common practice.” —The Bible Today“The 21 essays originated as papers presented at an April 2003 conference at the University of Notre Dame, which focused on the principal themes of Sanders’ work: Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Paul. Among the topics are the problem of self-definition, common Judaism in Greek and Latin authors, historiography for an age of destruction, the place of the Sadducees in first-century Judaism, Jesus in Jewish Galilee, Hellenism and the high priesthood in life-of-Jesus narratives, the incident at the temple as the occasion for Jesus’ death, the source of Paul’s problem in Judaism, Pauline soteriology, and grace and the transformation of agency in Christ.” —Research Book News“ . . . a gem of a volume and a fitting tribute to Sanders, the foremost scholar of Second Testament Studies. It contains informative and often controversial portraits of Jesus, first-century Judaism, and Pauline Christianity, as well as detailed information on Jesus’ missions in the Galilee region and his activities in Jerusalem.” —Journal of Ecumenical Studies“No contemporary New Testament scholar’s work is more important than the work of Sanders. No scholar of ancient Judaism or of early Christianity can afford to overlook this volume. Each of the contributors is a distinguished scholar in his or her own right and the contributions offer generally appreciative, but always stimulating, dialogue with Sanders’s seminal ideas. Every theological library should have a copy of this work.” —Religious Studies Review“Some of the papers from a 2003 conference in honour of E. P. Sanders form this fine Festschrift. It is organized around the three foci of Sanders’s achievement. . . . Professor Sanders might justifiably view with satisfaction the way his research has stimulated further theological reflection on scripture as well as hugely advancing the study of early Judaism, including Jesus and Paul.” —Journal of Theological Studies
£45.00
University of Notre Dame Press Sacrifice Scripture and Substitution
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays focuses on sacrifice in the context of Jewish and Christian scripture and is inspired by the thought and writings of René Girard. The contributors engage in a dialogue with Girard in their search for answers to key questions about the relation between religion and violence. The book is divided into two parts. The first opens with a conversation in which René Girard and Sandor Goodhart explore the relation between imitation and violence throughout human history, especially in religious culture. It is followed by essays on the subject of sacrifice contributed by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, including Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, Louis Feldman, Michael Fishbane, Erich Gruen, and Alan Segal. The second part contains essays on specific scriptural texts (Abraham''s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 and the book of Job in the Jewish tradition, the Gospel and Epistles in the Christian tradition). The authors explore new ways of applyinTrade Review"In increasing numbers, scholars are turning to the mimetic theory espoused by René Girard for answers to key questions about religion and violence. For the first time, the editors of this volume place in conversation with each other scholars who, from the perspective of Christian and Jewish traditions and scholarship, engage via mimetic theory the sacrificial and anti-sacrificial features of ancient Judaism and early Christianity and explore their subsequent trajectories." —Martha Reineke, University of Northern Iowa"A distinctive contribution of this volume is the focus of many of its essays on Judaism and Jewish readings of the Hebrew Bible. Girard's Christian focus has left his thought open to the criticism that it is a recycled form of supersessionism. Though I do not think that this book will put that issue completely to rest, its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish thinkers is welcome and an important advance." —James W. Watts, Syracuse University"This volume first presents a 'conversation' between R. Girard and Goodhart on mimesis, sacrifice, and the Bible. Then it presents twenty essays on specific scriptural texts." —New Testament Abstracts“This important book consists of twenty-one essays that are knowing, critical, and venturesome. . . . The intent of the collection is to understand better the ancient relationship of Judaism and Christianity. The accent of the volume, variously explored, expanded, appreciated, and in small ways critiqued, is the work of René Girard, to whom, along with his wife, the book is dedicated.” —Journal of Ecumenical Studies“The introduction . . . expounds René Girard’s theory that every culture is founded on the collective murder of a surrogate victim. . . . In Girard’s view, the Hebrew Bible reflects a profoundly anti-sacrificial development, and Christianity extends it by positing Jesus’ sacrifice as the supreme sacrifice that ends all sacrifices. . . . This volume . . . puts his theory at work, in two main ways, to which the two parts of the book are devoted.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review“The ground-breaking work of René Girard on the theme of violence and mimesis in religion is the inspiration for this collection of twenty-one essays. The impact of Girard’s thinking is particularly felt in biblical studies, as this volume demonstrates. The first nine essays address some aspect of biblical sacrifice itself; the rest focus on explicit biblical passages that treat the topic. . . . This is a very readable treatment of an important yet unresolved topic.” —The Bible Today“. . . ultimately, this book serves as an excellent introductory conversation into mimetic theory and sacrifice. This collection of essays is a good starting point for a beginning student, but also will function as a tool for the researcher.” —Religious Studies Review
£105.40
University of Notre Dame Press No Religion without Idolatry
Book SynopsisMoses Mendelssohn (17251786) is considered the foremost representative of Jewish Enlightenment. In No Religion without Idolatry, Gideon Freudenthal offers a novel interpretation of Mendelssohn's general philosophy and discusses for the first time Mendelssohn's semiotic interpretation of idolatry in his Jerusalem and in his Hebrew biblical commentary. Mendelssohn emerges from this study as an original philosopher, not a shallow popularizer of rationalist metaphysics, as he is sometimes portrayed. Of special and lasting value is his semiotic theory of idolatry. From a semiotic perspective, both idolatry and enlightenment are necessary constituents of religion. Idolatry ascribes to religious symbols an intrinsic value: enlightenment maintains that symbols are conventional and merely signify religious content but do not share its properties and value. Without enlightenment, religion degenerates to fetishism; without idolatry it turns into philosophy and frustrates religiouTrade Review"In this lucid and provocative study, Gideon Freudenthal offers an original and compelling reading of Mendelssohn as well as a defense of the possibility of religious rationalism more generally. This book is not only an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship on Mendelssohn and early modern philosophy, but it also significantly sharpens and advances contemporary conversations about the relations between religion and reason." —Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University"In this masterful study, Gideon Freudenthal demonstrates how Mendelssohn’s philosophy, including his philosophy of religion, is grounded in semiotics. The result is a landmark work that not only successfully challenges standard interpretations of Mendelssohn’s 'enlightened Judaism' and its alleged inconsistency but also effectively invites reconsideration of the very possibility of 'religion without idolatry.'" —Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University"In focusing on Mendelssohn's 'semiotics of idolatry,' Gideon Freudenthal writes as a philosopher fully at home in multiple traditions: contemporary philosophy, eighteenth-century philosophy, Jewish biblical exegesis, and comparative religion. The result is a systematic and penetrating study, based on the Hebrew as well as the German texts, that engages Mendelssohn on perhaps the most critical issue of his understanding of religion with unprecedented philosophical rigor and imagination." —David Sorkin, City University of New York Graduate Center“This is an innovative study of the views of the ‘father’ of modern Jewish philosophy, Moses Mendelssohn. It emphasizes correctly that Mendelssohn’s philosophy of Judaism was thoroughly rational in the Enlightenment’s sense of the notion of rationality, and concentrated not on metaphysical arguments and disputations about matters of faith but, rather, on the role and significance of religious practices. . . . As a result, this is a valuable, provocative, unconventional interpretation of Mendelssohn that is sure to stir scholarly debate” —Choice“Freudenthal’s book introduces us to a Mendelssohn who is a serious, consistent, and careful philosopher, an independent thinker whose true philosophical position has gone underappreciated for too long. . . . We are indebted to Freudenthal’s book for challenging us to rethink Mendelssohn’s philosophical project and thereby to rethink the relevance Enlightenment philosophers may still have today.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews“Freudenthal’s book is highly to be recommended. Its scholarship is impressive, the writing lucid and engaging. It represents an important and original contribution to our understanding of Mendelssohn, complementing the work of Altmann, Allan Arkush, and others.” —H-Judaic“Freudenthal expands the notion of idolatry beyond its common restriction to false objects of devotion and renders it a heuristic principle to examine not only Judaism but all religions as semiotic systems.” —Theological Studies“In all, Freudenthal’s book is highly to be recommended. Its scholarship is impressive, the writing lucid and engaging. It represents an important and original contribution to our understanding of Mendelssohn, complementing the work of Altmann, Allan Arkush, and others.” —H-Net“This book offers a thorough and robust defense of Moses Mendelssohn’s (1729–86) philosophical and religious project. Freudenthal’s familiarity not only with Mendelssohn’s philosophical, but also with his theological works—including scriptural commentaries in Hebrew—allow him to offer a more complete and consistent view of Mendelssohn’s project.” —The Review of Metaphysics
£70.55
Pennsylvania State University Press Imagining the Kibbutz Visions of Utopia in
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the literary and cinematic representations of the kibbutz movement in Israel. Authors discussed include Amos Oz, Savyon Liebrecht, Nathan Shaham, Avraham Balaban, Atallah Mansour, Eli Amir, and Batya Gur. Directors discussed include Yitzhak Yeshurun, Akiva Tevet, Dror Shaul, and Jonathan Paz.Trade Review“Thanks to the extensive outlook and the copious collection of texts, Imagining the Kibbutz is a valuable resource and a welcome contribution to the field of kibbutz studies.”—Lior Libman Israel Studies Review“In a brilliant analysis that is both comprehensive and penetrating, Ranen Omer-Sherman illuminates the vast spectrum of literary and cinematic narratives that emerged from one of the most radical and thrilling social experiments of our time: the Israeli kibbutz. Omer-Sherman writes with authority and passion, in prose that will excite the scholar and layperson alike. Part literary critique, part social history, Omer-Sherman’s book sheds light not only on the narratives of the kibbutz but also on the utopian enterprise itself, from its heady idealism to its bitter contentiousness. I was, quite honestly, unable to put it down. Anyone interested in Israel, literature, film, or the myriad ways in which artistic expression reflects and shapes the birth and growth of a modern nation would do well to read this book.”—Joan Leegant,author of An Hour in Paradise and Wherever You Go“The kibbutz is an extraordinary human, social, and economic accomplishment, widely recognized as one of the most impressive achievements of Zionism. The impact of the kibbutz has always far exceeded its numerical size, and Imagining the Kibbutz makes us realize that this is also the case with the visions of the kibbutz in Hebrew literature and in films made in or on Israel. Ranen Omer-Sherman very skillfully combines the particularity of the local scene with universal human experience transcending space and time, such as the clash between individual desires and unyielding national imperatives. Combining the critical outlook of the academic outsider with deep, loving insight acquired through his own personal experience, the author portrays the kibbutz as a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The book proves that the reports of the kibbutz’s death are greatly exaggerated; it is still a vibrant society making an inspiring imprint both on Israeli reality and Hebrew literature and film. Imagining the Kibbutz is a very relevant and up-to-date book, enhancing our understanding of contemporary Israel at large.”—Aviva Halamish,The Open University of Israel “Imagining the Kibbutz is not only a masterful study of literary representations of the kibbutz, but also a portrait of a country—Israel—through the lens of its most radical experiment. Tracing the evolution of the kibbutz from its utopian beginnings through economic crisis and ideological disillusionment to its current hybrid forms, Ranen Omer-Sherman illuminates the tensions between individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism, diaspora and national identity that lie at the heart of Israeli society. A probing analysis of a wide array of imaginative renderings of the kibbutz experience, this important book should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding Israel’s individual diversity and collective soul.”—Margot Singer,author of The Pale of Settlement“What makes Imagining the Kibbutz particularly compelling is its emphasis on the affective power that the kibbutz exercises upon the individual. Ranen Omer-Sherman guides us through a diverse array of literary and cinematic texts with sensitivity and astuteness, urging us to bear in mind culture’s humanizing function even in its representation of the most intensely politicized situations. A deeply engaged and delightfully engaging writer, Omer-Sherman balances his experiences with the kibbutz with a discerning and rigorous critical eye, confronting its complexities and contradictions in order to suggest that in many ways these reflect paradoxes that continue to inhabit the core of Israeli identity itself.”—Karen Grumberg,University of Texas at Austin“The kibbutz has always played an outsized role in images of Israel, representing in microcosm the ideals upon which the nation was founded. The kibbutz embodied, in its purest form, the inherent tension between common goals and individual interests. As Ranen Omer-Sherman gracefully demonstrates in this penetrating analysis, the literature growing out of the kibbutz experience is also an outsized component of Israeli culture. From the outset, the kibbutz was ‘always in crisis,’ portrayed sensitively in the many novels, short stories, essays, and films inspired by the tension between ideology and reality. This landmark study also puts the recent ‘normalization’ of the kibbutz into clearer perspective, making it clear that its role in the broader society remains central. Anyone with an interest in Israeli culture and society will find this book indispensable in highlighting a critical dimension of the Israeli experience, past and present.”—Alan Dowty,University of Notre Dame“From its emergence in pre-war Palestine until its privatization in the mid-1980s, the kibbutz was an iconic symbol of the settlement of Jews in their historic land. The lived experience of that utopian experiment was sometimes too controversial to deal with in nonfiction, but found expression in literature and film. Ranen Omer-Sherman has produced a valuable survey of such representations, which he considers wistfully, yet hopefully, at a time when kibbutzim are succumbing to privatization, even as some cling to their erstwhile promise of communalism.”—Aviva Ben-Ur,University of Massachusetts Amherst“A volume whose sharp insights and wide-ranging analyses (some of them appearing here for the first time in English) contribute greatly to our understanding of the histories of and shifting perceptions surrounding one of modernity’s most fascinating ideological movements. Informative for the specialist reader as well as accessible for students and a general lay audience, Imagining the Kibbutz promises to shape the ways in which historiographers, ethnographers, literary and cultural critics, and even authors and artists themselves discuss portrayals of the kibbutz phenomenon in the decades to come.”—Nathan P. Devir Studies in American Jewish Literature“Just as some new religions changed and structured themselves in innovative routines, while others failed and declined, the kibbutzim have gone through a similar process of triumph, fall, decline, and change. Imagining the Kibbutz offers an excellent opportunity to review these transformations.”—Motti Inbari Nova ReligioTable of ContentsContentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction1. Trepidation and Exultation in Early Kibbutz Fiction2. “With a Zealot’s Fervor”: Individuals Facing the Fissures of Ideology in Oz, Shaham, and Balaban3. The Kibbutz and Its Others at Midcentury: Palestinian and Mizrahi Interlopers in Utopia4. Late Disillusionments and Village Crimes: The Kibbutz Mysteries of Batya Gur and Savyon Liebrecht5. From the 1980s to 2010: Nostalgia and the Revisionist Lens in Kibbutz FilmAfterword: Between Hope and Despair: The Legacy of the Kibbutz Dream in the Twenty-First Century AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£35.06
Pennsylvania State University Press The Return of Carvajal
Book SynopsisRecounts events surrounding the recovery, in 2017, of a sixteenth-century biographical manuscript by Luis de Carvajal the Younger, a crypto-Jew executed by the Inquisition in colonial Mexico.Trade Review“People interested in Jewish and Latin American history will most enjoy Stavans’s study, which for all its scrupulous research leaves the central mystery tantalizingly unsolved.”—Publishers Weekly“This book will be of interest to crypto-Jewish collections and potentially also to library science collections.”—Shmuel Ben-Gad Association of Jewish Libraries ReviewsTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsPart I: Lost1. The Thief2. The ProphetPart II: Found3. The Chronicler4. The CollectorNotes
£16.10
University of Washington Press A BestSelling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Brings a new perspective to considering the dimensions of Jewish modernity from the history of the book. . . . [Ruderman’s] exploration of book marketing as a markedly modern exercise should invite future scholars to conduct comparative research on the role of literary bestsellers in the shaping of modern Judaism." * Journal of Jewish Studies *"Brings us one step closer to a revision of modern Jewish intellectual history, providing us with a window into the myriad ways in which Jewish thought was transformed in modern Western life." * Association for Jewish Studies Review *
£33.98
University of Washington Press The Kiss of God
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. "If you wish to live, then die": Aspects of Death and Desire in Jewish Spirituality2. "For Your sake we are killed all day long": The Sanctification of God in Love3. "As if he sacrificed a soul": Forms of Ritual Simulation and SubstitutionEpilogueNotesIndex
£25.32
University of Washington Press The Jewish Life Cycle
Book SynopsisReviews Jewish culture and history. This book examines how and why various rites and customs celebrating stages in the life cycle have evolved through the ages and persisted to this day. For each phase of life - from childhood, adolescence, adulthood, to the advanced years, it traces the origin and development of specific rites.Trade Review"Informative, clear, and well written. This comprehensive guide is historical ethnography at its best." * Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Birth, "Bris," Schooling 2. Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation 3. Engagement, Betrothal, Marriage 4. Aging, Dying, Remembering Conclusions Glossary Notes Bibliography Index
£29.66
University of Washington Press Make Yourself a Teacher
Book SynopsisConsiders how teacher/student relations sustain and renew the Jewish traditionTrade Review"The book was written to be accessible and its insights, literary and education, are relevant to the many readers of these rabbinic sources, and to teachers and lecturers seeking insight from Jewish sources." -- Pinchas Roth * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *"Her book wonderfully demonstrates the creative interplay between traditional learning and contemporary intellectual freedom . . . Rabbis, and all of us, would do well to internalize Handelman's call to see teaching as not an add-on but a central category of human experience." -- Yehudah Mirsky * Jewish Ideas Daily *"Handelman’s book drew me into a world I knew little about, providing a heretofore neglected, but intriguing space for thinking about the teacher-student relationship. . . . That Handelman wrote this book when bombs were exploding throughout Jerusalem – including at the university where she teaches – demonstrates that the teacher-student relationship lives, and may be even more critical, during crises." -- Mitzi J. Smith * Teaching Theology & Religion *Table of ContentsPreface A Note on Translation and Transliteration of Hebrew Notes on Notes Introduction "I Only Want the Piece Which Is in Your Mouth" 1. "Torah of the Belly": Rabbi Eliezer Starves for a Teacher 2. "The Gates of Wounded Feelings"" Rabbi Eliezer Is Banned 3. "Father! Father! Israel's Chariot and Its Horsemen!": The Passing of Rabbi Eliezer Epilogue Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£29.66
University of Washington Press A BestSelling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era
Book SynopsisDescribing the developments in science and philosophy in the sacred language of Hebrew, the author argued that an intellectual understanding of the cosmos was not at odds with but actually key to achieving spiritual attainment.Trade Review"Brings a new perspective to considering the dimensions of Jewish modernity from the history of the book. . . . [Ruderman’s] exploration of book marketing as a markedly modern exercise should invite future scholars to conduct comparative research on the role of literary bestsellers in the shaping of modern Judaism." * Journal of Jewish Studies *"Brings us one step closer to a revision of modern Jewish intellectual history, providing us with a window into the myriad ways in which Jewish thought was transformed in modern Western life." * Association for Jewish Studies Review *
£52.14
Yale University Press The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative
Book SynopsisLaced with brilliant insights, broad in its view of the interaction of culture and theology, this book gives new resonance to old and important questions about the meaning of the Bible.
£25.00
Yale University Press Jewish Christianity
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Through an incisive and critical analysis of the history of the concept of ‘Jewish Christianity,’ Matt Jackson-McCabe shows persuasively how abandoning the concept enables different voices and social formations to be heard and mapped in their own terms.”—Judith Lieu, University of Cambridge“Future investigations under the rubric of ‘Jewish Christianity’ will be unable to avoid reckoning with the argument of this volume, namely that the category ‘Jewish Christianity’ inevitably encodes a Christian metaphysics of Christianity itself.”—John W. Marshall, University of Toronto“Jackson-McCabe’s Jewish Christianity is a brilliant book, navigating the complex issues surrounding this vexed term with incredible clarity and insight, while providing a cutting-edge vision of how attention to the historiography of modern scholarship can enrich our understanding of religion and identity in both antiquity and modernity.”—Annette Yoshiko Reed, New York University“The term ‘Jewish Christianity’ has always been problematic. This book is a provocative and stimulating plea for an abandoning of the term, in spite of its long history of study, and is sure to engender discussion and reassessment.”—James Carleton Paget, University of Cambridge“In this excellent study, internationally renowned scholar Matt Jackson-McCabe has given us an essential tool for a deeper understanding of Christian origins. An indispensable resource and a must read for anyone interested in Jewish–Christian relations.”—Anders Runesson, University of Oslo
£45.12
Yale University Press Friendship in the Hebrew Bible The Anchor Yale
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew BibleTrade Review“Saul Olyan has written a truly original work that not only opens up a new area in biblical studies, but creates a full-blown synthesis of the socio-literary field of biblical friendship.”— Ronald Hendel, University of California, Berkeley“Saul Olyan is one of the world’s most consistently insightful scholars of the Hebrew Bible. Here he offers a study of friendship that will prove a helpful companion for anyone curious about what biblical texts reveal about the history of human relationships."—Steven Weitzman, University of Pennsylvania“A learned yet affecting study of a much-overlooked topic by a world-class scholar. Olyan brilliantly demonstrates how in the Hebrew Bible family and friends (and to a lesser extent, treaty partners) manifest similar behaviors. This comprehensive survey will become the standard work on the subject.”—Mark S. Smith, Princeton Theological Seminary“Through an insightful and sensitive reading of the vocabulary of friendship along with an astute analysis of its function in a variety of biblical passages, Olyan illuminates with striking clarity this important but oft-ignored concept.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University“Another groundbreaking study from one of the finest scholars in the field of biblical studies. With Olyan as our expert guide, we learn to rethink our assumptions not only about the biblical texts but also about what it means to be human.”—Jacob L. Wright, Emory University
£40.38
Yale University Press Feeling Jewish
Book SynopsisIn this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish-even when you're not.Trade Review“A scintillating exploration of how feelings stereotypicaly associated with Jewishness are not quite so uncomplicatedly negative as is surmised and, what’s more, increasingly common in a globalised, hyper-connected society.” —Keiron Pim, Spectator"...an immensely informative, interesting and important book... we might well emulate Baum's bold and bracing book by interrogating our feelings, complex and contradictory though they may be, and try to understand what they tell us about ourselves and our world."—Glenn C. Altschuler, Jerusalem Post"Like the phenomenon it describes, this book is intellectually luminous, psychologically penetrating, existentially anxious, and wonderfully funny."—Zadie Smith “Baum has startling clarity about complicated issues. The fluency of her amusement and engagement—her deadpan provocations, her intriguing formulations—gives Feeling Jewish an irresistible originality. After reading this book you will feel differently about your feelings and so about virtually everything else.”—Adam Phillips “Feeling Jewish is a wonderful book for everyone who has feelings, whether or not they are Jewish. Devorah Baum gives us psychoanalysis (Jewish), literature (sometimes Jewish), and feelings (definitely Jewish) and makes them all come alive. She also gives us herself—a great new, neurotic friend.”—Stephen Frosh, Birkbeck College “This marvellous book offers a rich, subtle, and thought-provoking analysis not only of ‘feeling Jewish’ but of a range of questions that go far beyond this. Challenging received ideas, Baum invites us to rethink assumptions and divisions we take for granted, from identity to gender, from love to hate, from doubt to certainty, and from insider to outsider.”—Darian Leader, psychoanalyst and author “Baum guides us with great poise and comic verve through the strange and confusing labyrinth we call ‘feeling.’ As stimulating intellectually as it is involving emotionally, this sparklingly original book brilliantly attests to the intricate and mutually enriching relation of feeling to thinking.”—Josh Cohen, Goldsmiths, University of London
£18.99
Yale University Press Abraham Joshua Heschel
Book SynopsisA biography of the rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who became a symbol of the marriage between religion and social justiceTrade Review“This highly appreciative biography of Heschel benefits from hindsight throughout. . . . Zelizer’s constantly looking for early signs of his protagonist’s radical social activism, for his Heschel is not only the author of the highly influential Prophets, he is also driven—like the subjects of that work—‘to communicate God’s anguish to the world.’”—Sara Jo Ben Zvi, Segula“Julian E. Zelizer does a fine job in evoking the different social and cultural milieux in which Heschel moved, from the often grinding poverty but religious richness of Jewish life in Warsaw to the comforts of America, where the primary threat to the Jewish community was spiritual desiccation.”—Simon Rocker, Jewish Chronicle“Zelizer covers the life and career of Heschel thoroughly and elegantly. This book will find an enthusiastic and appreciative public.”—Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple“Julian Zelizer’s Abraham Joshua Heschel transcends time and place. The life of Heschel moves seamlessly from inside the Jewish world to exhilarating movements of the 1960s and the quest for peace and justice. Zelizer shows how Heschel’s words, thoughts, and actions resonate to this day.”—Hasia Diner, author of Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World“Julian Zelizer’s exciting new biography brings Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to life. Zelizer brings his own unique lens as a political historian and sheds new light on a life well and inspirationally led.”—Rabbi Shai Held, author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence
£16.14
The University of Michigan Press Acting Jewish
Book SynopsisExamines how notions of Jewishness have been conveyed in a range of television, stage, and film productions, since the end of World War II. Beginning in 1947, this book draws on a different discipline of performance studies to explore the ever-changing relationship between Jews and mainstream American culture.Trade Review"Fascinating and original...Bial's command of sources is impressive, and his concept of 'double-coding' is convincing... the book should have no trouble finding a large audience." - Barbara W. Grossman, author of Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice"
£19.90
LUP - University of Michigan Press Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews
Book SynopsisThis study adds to contemporary scholarship on cosmopolitanism by making the experience of Jews central to the discussion, as it traces the evolution of Jewish cosmopolitanism over the last two centuries. Through a series of case studies, the authors analyse the historical and discursive junctures that mark the central paradigm shifts in the Jewish self-image.Trade ReviewThis book has an extraordinarily grand sweep and offers penetrating and fascinating insights—a true tour-de-force."" - Michael Berkowitz, University College London""A thorough and exhaustive study of the history of the ‘cosmopolitan’ ideal and its relationship to Jewish identity from the Enlightenment to the present, providing short and incisive analyses of a vast number of texts. Because the writing is clear and does not get bogged down in arcane academic debates, Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews should appeal to a broad audience."" - Robert D. Tobin, Clark University
£48.95
The University of Michigan Press The Medieval Postcolonial Jew In and Out of Time
Book SynopsisStudies violent temporal clashes that are written into the medieval vision of annus domini. Through a select group of literature in Middle English, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as sixteen manuscript pictorials, author Miriamne Ara Krummel confronts the notion that annus domini time (whether disguised as CE or AD) figures as the universal standard.
£65.50
The University of Michigan Press Instrument of Memory
Book SynopsisUsing the lens of memory studies, the work shows how the Christian tradition of the Wandering Jew legend centred the memory of the Passion at the heart of the Wandering Jew’s curse. Instrument of Memory also shows how Jewish artists and writers have reimagined the legend through Jewish memory traditions.Trade ReviewWith its new analysis of a well-known and enduringly popular legend and new identifications of Jewish literary and artistic re-imaginings of it, Instrument of Memory will be an important intervention in both literary criticism and Jewish studies. It also provides new insights relevant to our understanding of nationalism and antisemitism, subject areas in which the author has published other important work. For medievalists, it newly demonstrates how medieval Christian tropes and ideas provided the historical infrastructure for antisemitisms of later periods, which is an issue of concern across disciplines." - Debra Strickland, University of GlasgowTable of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: The Wandering Jew and Christendom Chapter One: The Wandering Jew as Relic in Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora Chapter Two: The 1602 Kurtze Beschreibung: A Lutheran Recalibration Part Two: The Wandering Jew in the Age of Emancipation Chapter Three: EugÈne Sue’s Le Juif errant Chapter Four: Heine and the Wandering Jew’s Beard Part Three: The Wandering Jew and Jerusalem in an Age of Global War Chapter Five: Marc Chagall’s Remembrance and White Crucifixion Chapter Six: Uri Zvi Greenberg’s King Ahasver Chapter Seven: Edmond Fleg’s JÉsus: RacontÉ par Le Juif errant Chapter Eight: Sholem Asch’s The Nazarene Part Four: Contemporary Encounters with the Wandering Jew Chapter Nine: Stefan Heym’s Ahasver Chapter Ten: The Wandering Jew in the Twenty-First Century: Eshkol Nevo, Dara Horn, and Sarah Perry Conclusion Bibliography
£60.95
University of California Press A Radical Jew
Book SynopsisJewishness disrupts categories of identity because it is not genealogical, or even religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension with one another. An exploration of these tensions in the Pauline corpus, argues the author lead us to an appreciation of our own cultural quandaries as male and female, gay and straight, Jew and Palestinian.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Wrestling with Paul I. Circumcision, Allegory, and Universal "Man" 2. What Was Wrong with Judaism? The Cultural Politics of Pauline Scholarship 3· The Spirit and the Flesh: Paul's Political Anthropology 4· Moses' Veil; or, The Jewish Letter, the Christian Spirit 5· Circumcision and Revelation; or, The Politics of the Spirit 6. Was Paul an "Anti-Semite"? 7· Brides of Christ: Jewishness and the Pauline Origins of Christian Sexual Renunciation 8. "There Is No Male and Female": Galatians and Gender Trouble 9· Paul, the "jewish Problem," and the "Woman Question" 10. Answering the Mail: Toward a Radical Jewishness Notes Bibliography Index
£24.30
University of California Press Blood and Belief
Book SynopsisTraces the continuing, changing, and often clashing roles of blood as both symbol and substance through the entire sweep of Jewish and Christian history.Trade Review"Biale's writing is as interesting, and sometimes as controversial, as his topics." -- Ingrid Wilkerson World History Connected "Bird provides readers with a readable, informed overview of the state of the question." Hebrew Studies: A Journal Devoted To Hebrew Language And LiteratureTable of ContentsPreface Introduction: Writing with Blood 1. Pollution and Power: Blood in the Hebrew Bible 2. Blood and the Covenant: The Jewish and Christian Careers of a Biblical Verse 3. God's Blood: Medieval Jews and Christians Debate the Body 4. Power in the Blood: The Medieval and the Modern in Nazi Anti-Semitism 5. From Blood Libel to Blood Community: Self-Defense and Self-Assertion in Modern Jewish Culture Epilogue: Blood and Belief Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Who Will Lead Us
Book SynopsisRevolving around the central figure of the rebbe, this book explores two families with too few successors, two with too many successors, and one that believes their last rebbe continues to lead them even after his death.Trade Review"One might expect to find these riveting succession stories-of the rebbes of the Munkacs, Boyan and Kopyczynitz, Bobover, Satmar, and Chabad Lubavitch dynasties-in a TV mini-series rather than in a work of sociology and history. While fueled by an enormous amount of research, they read more like page turners where the obsession is not sex, but succession." MomentTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Prologue 1 Succession in Contemporary Hasidism: Who Will Lead Us? 2 Munkács: An Oedipal Challenge 3 Boyan and Kopyczynitz: Running Out of Rebbes 4 Bobov: A Clash of Families 5 Satmar: Succession Charged with Conflict 6 ChaBaD Lubavitch: A Rebbe Who Never Dies Final Thoughts Notes Index
£22.50
University of California Press Judaisms A TwentyFirstCentury Introduction to
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to be a Jew in the twenty-first century? Exploring the multifaceted and intensely complicated characteristics of this age-old, ever-changing community, this book examines how Jews are a culture, ethnicity, nation, nationality, race, religion, and more. Each chapter revolves around a single theme.Trade Review"Using a social psychology approach, Hahn Tapper...invite[s] readers to see their own identities reflected through the lens of what they [a]re reading and discovering about Judaism and the Jewish experience."-Renee Ghert-Zand, The Times of Israel The Times of Israel "Hahn Tapper hopes the book will 'convey academic ideas in a digestible way' - for anyone from the casual Jewish reader to the non-Jewish university student taking a course on Judaism. There is plenty in this book that will surprise even many well-read Jews, or recast common knowledge in a new light." J., the Jewish News Weekly "We've all been taught not to judge a book by its cover, but the cover images of "Judaisms" alert the reader that this is not your typical course reader on the Jewish religion...This book, which serves both as an easy-to-read text for undergrads as well as a more advanced selection for graduate students (footnotes are available online), articulates that today's Jewish community is vastly different than the one at the turn of the last century let alone a century ago." -- Rabbi Jason Miller Rabbi With a BlogTable of ContentsPREFACE: METHODS AND ASSUMPTIONS; EDITORIAL PRACTICES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction 1. Narratives 2. Sinais 3. Zions 4. Messiahs 5. Laws 6. Mysticisms 7. Cultures 8. Movements 9. Genocides 10. Powers 11. Borders 12. Futures FIGURE CREDITS INDEX Supplementary Resources (see Downloads tab) Key Terms Timeline of Major Texts Activities Notes
£27.00
University of California Press The Eternal Dissident
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book ought to be read by every religious leader in every faith tradition, and by atheists and skeptics too. Few works are as important as this one, and I recommend it without hesitation." * Rabbi John Rosove's Blog *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction David N. Myers Part I. First Sermon 1. Chapel Sermon, October 30, 1948 Commentary by Rabbi Samuel Karff Part II. Inspirations 2. Sigmund Freud, May 11, 1956 Commentary by Professor Peter Loewenberg 3. Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography: Three Passions in Life Commentary by Dr. Joan Beerman 4. Looking at Kafka, January 8, 1982 Commentary by Professor Saul Friedlander 5. The Legacy of MLK, January 15, 1982 Commentary by the Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. 6. First Encounter with George (Regas), April 13, 2005 7. Why the Prophets Are Important, May 20, 1983 Commentary by Professor Jack Miles Part III. Faith, Doubt, and Duty 8. Handwritten Reflections on Doubt, undated Commentary by Rabbi Rachel Timoner 9. Can We Excommunicate God? April 30, 1965 Commentary by Professor Rabbi Rachel Adler 10. Duty of the Rabbi, undated Commentary by Rabbi Richard Levy 11. From the Diary of a Leo Baeck Temple Rabbi, February 5, 1971 Commentary by Rabbi Kenneth Chasen 12. Rabbi Beerman’s To-Do List 13. Yom Kippur Eve—Vocation of a Rabbi, September 17, 1972 Commentary by Rabbi Sharon Brous 14. Fast between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to Protest Munich and Vietnam, September 1972 Commentary by Professor Steven J. Ross 15. My Troubles with God; God’s Troubles with Me, February 9, 1979 Commentary by David Rintels 16. The Beginnings of an Outline for Jews to Consider, undated Commentary by Aziza Hasan Part IV. Social Justice 17. The Kindest Use a Knife, October 16, 1953 Commentary by Rabbi John L. Rosove 18. Is There a Relationship between Judaism and Social Justice? April 14, 1954 Commentary by Rabbi Zoë Klein 19. The Problems of the City: A Jewish Dilemma, February 4, 1966 Commentary by Professor Rabbi Aryeh Cohen 20. UCLA Teach-In on Vietnam War, March 24, 1966 Commentary by Rabbi Sanford Ragins 21. Notes for Symposium on Black Power, January 6, 1967 Commentary by Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller 22. Letter to President Lyndon Johnson, April 13, 1967 Commentary by Judith Viorst 23. Rosh Hashanah Eve, September 30, 1970 (5731) Commentary by Professor Jonathan D. Greenberg 24. How I Lost the Election in St. Louis, July 9, 1971 Commentary by Professor William Cutter 25. Invocation for Religious Leaders for McGovern, June 1, 1972 Commentary by the Reverend J. Edwin Bacon 26. Survival in a Nuclear Age, February 17, 1984 Commentary by the Reverend George F. Regas 27. California People of Faith against the Death Penalty, October 16, 2001; April 20, 2002 Commentary by Mike Farrell 28. Piece on Human Condition Written for the Office of the Americas, November 2, 2002 Commentary by Stephen Rohde 29. A Vision for a Bewildering Time: Commencement Address at Washington & Jefferson College, May 18, 2007 Commentary by Professor David Ellenson 30. Letter to President George W. Bush, April 11, 2008 Commentary by Norman Lear 31. Human Rights Watch, November 17, 2009 Commentary by Jane Olson 32. A Sermon for All Saints, July 3, 2011 Commentary by Mel Levine Part V. Israel/Palestine 33. Time in Israel, Parts I and II, November 1967 Commentary by Daniel Sokatch 34. CCAR Breira Statement, 1977 Commentary by Professor Michael A. Meyer 35. Yom Kippur Morning, October 11, 1978 Commentary by Milton Viorst 36. Yom Kippur Eve, September 26, 1982 Commentary by Connie Bruck 37. Visions of Peace in the Middle East, October 31, 1992 Commentary by Salam al-Marayati 38. A Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning, October 1, 2006 Commentary by Rabbi Brant Rosen 39. Exchange of Letters with Bruce Ramer, October 2006–January 2007 Commentary by Bruce Ramer 40. A Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning, October 4, 2014 Commentary by Professor Nomi M. Stolzenberg Sayings of Leonard I. Beerman Notes List of Contributors Index
£27.00
University of California Press Who Will Lead Us
Book SynopsisHasidism, a movement many believed had passed its golden age, has had an extraordinary revival since it was nearly decimated in the Holocaust and repressed in the Soviet Union. Hasidic communities, now settled primarily in North America and Israel, have reversed the losses they suffered and are growing exponentially. With powerful attachments to the past, mysticism, community, tradition, and charismatic leadership, Hasidism seems the opposite of contemporary Western culture, yet it has thrived in the democratic countries and culture of the West. How?Who Will Lead Us?finds the answers to this question in the fascinating story of five contemporary Hasidic dynasties and their handling of the delicate issue of leadership and succession. Revolving around the central figure of therebbe, the book explores two dynasties with too few successors, two with too many successors, and one that believes their lastrebbecontinues to lead them even after his death. Samuel C. Heilman, recognized as a foremost expert on modern Jewish Orthodoxy, here provides outsiders with the essential guide to continuity in the Hasidic world.Trade Review"One might expect to find these riveting succession stories—of the rebbes of the Munkacs, Boyan and Kopyczynitz, Bobover, Satmar, and Chabad Lubavitch dynasties—in a TV mini-series rather than in a work of sociology and history. While fueled by an enormous amount of research, they read more like page turners where the obsession is not sex, but succession." * Moment *"Riveting. . . . A great read!" * Haemtza *"An invaluable addition to the ranks of objective studies of a Jewish movement that continues to flourish in the U.S. even as more modern denominations decline." * Publishers Weekly *"Anyone interested in Jewish history mixed with a bit of palace intrigue will enjoy this book.” * Jewish Book Council *“...Heilman’s wellspring of facts and tidbits conveys empathy and sympathy to the old/new Hasidic yore on the American shore bounded by memory, defined by family genetics, and guided by a religion of law. . . . This is a well-researched tome.” * Reading Religion *"Anyone interested in Jewish history mixed with a bit of palace intrigue will enjoy this book." * Jewish Book Review *"Engrossing . . . . Required reading for anyone interested in the contemporary hasidic world." * Seforim *"Who Will Lead Us? includes many great stories, all of them sharply and engagingly told. Heilman’s account of the fight over the leadership of the Bobovers (resolved after years of infighting by the New York State Supreme Court) is worth the price of the hard cover volume alone." * Jewish Review of Books *“Heilman has drawn on many sources which he presents to us for the first time. He writes like a novelist thus making this a book that is hard to put down.” * Reviews by Amos Lassen *"Once again, students of Judaism and religious traditionalism are indebted to Heilman for his brilliant and insightful work." * Contemporary Jewry *"An in-depth analysis of how a very particular part of the Jewish world confronts modernity, post-Holocaust society, the modern nation-state of Israel, and a flourishing American Jewish community." * CHOICE *"Fascinating. . . . This book is worthwhile for insights into these insular societies; societies that many may find inspiring." * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *"Heilman is a master storyteller. . . .For readers interested in the internal dynamics of Hasidic communal life and in the adaptation of traditionalist Jewish groups to life in America, this book will be an enthralling and sometimes startling read." * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Prologue 1 Succession in Contemporary Hasidism: Who Will Lead Us? 2 Munkács: An Oedipal Challenge 3 Boyan and Kopyczynitz: Running Out of Rebbes 4 Bobov: A Clash of Families 5 Satmar: Succession Charged with Conflict 6 ChaBaD Lubavitch: A Rebbe Who Never Dies Final Thoughts Notes Index
£18.90
Harvard University Press The Washington Haggadah
Book SynopsisAfter the Bible, the Passover haggadah is the most widely read classic Jewish text. Few editions are as exquisite as the Washington Haggadah in the Library of Congress. A stunning facsimile edition, meticulously reproduced in full color, brings this illuminated fifteenth-century manuscript to life for a new generation of readers.Trade ReviewBelknap Press of Harvard University Press has published an absolutely gorgeous volume, complete with a facsimile edition (in full color!) of The Washington Haggadah...Anyone who comes to the seder with The Washington Haggadah will easily win "most beautiful haggadah of the seder" award, and it'll make an absolutely delightful bar/bat mitzvah present. -- Menachem Butler * The Michtavim blog *If you're interested in deepening your Seder with a visual testimony of the ritual's antiquity, [The Washington Haggadah] can be a beautiful addition to your table. -- Jay Michaelson * Forward *The work is illuminating in more ways than one, and includes a color facsimile of the original 38 pages, as well as a description and explanation of each of the 11 illustrations. This academic review leaves one excited about medieval manuscripts, and wanting to delve into additional works created by ben Simeon. -- Mark Rebacz * In Jerusalem *No run-of-the-mill haggadah is quite as effective at making the past present as The Washington Haggadah. This beautifully produced book is a detailed facsimile of a 500-year-old haggadah in the collection of the Library of Congress, which explains the name...[Joel ben Simeon] is described by David Stern, in the introduction to this edition, as one of the most important and prolific scribes and illustrators in the history of the Jewish book...More powerful still, however, are the illustrations that Joel ben Simeon added to the margins of the text (usefully, The Washington Haggadah includes a descriptive catalog of all these illustrations)...The publishers have reproduced the manuscript so accurately that you can see wine and food spots on several pages, as well as places where the ink has smeared after being touched with a wet hand...From the Exodus to the Rabbis to 1478 to 1879 to 2011--in these pages, if anywhere, the past is present and the present past. -- Adam Kirsch * Tablet Magazine *The illustrations of contemporary Jewish life in the margins of the text draw one back into a lost world, shifting between medieval and modern. Even after all these years, the text is remarkably readable...David Stern provides a concise and enlightening introduction to the development of the Haggadah and ben Simeon's work, while Katrin Kogman-Appel reveals a sharp-eyed attention to detail in her examination of the Washington Haggadah itself and its place in the context of the artistic development revealed in other Haggadah manuscripts of the time. -- Ralph Amelan * Jerusalem Report *Belknap Press [is] to be complimented on bringing out a reasonably priced, attractively presented and scholarly facsimile of one of the treasures of the art of the illuminated Hebrew manuscript in its golden period. -- Yerachmiel Rubin * Jewish Tribune *This facsimile edition of one of Joel's best preserved manuscripts opens many doors on the Jewish world of the late Middle Ages...The pleasure in this facsimile lies in its delightful illustrations and innovative calligraphy, graced with Joel's unique decorative touches, and the wine stains and notes left by its various owners, indicating that the haggadah was actually used. In turning the pages of Joel's haggadah at leisure, readers may well imagine its use for over four centuries. * Jewish Book World *
£30.56
Harvard Center for Jewish Studies Hasidism
Book SynopsisThis volume is a major reassessment of scholarly commonplaces about the origins and nature of early Hasidism, the mystical movement which engulfed east European Jewry in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Four distinguished scholars contribute new research to what has been a most popular concern of Jewish historical study.
£9.45
Harvard University Press The Crown and the Courts
Book SynopsisThe idea of the separation of powers, a bedrock of modern constitutionalism, has a deeper history. David Flatto uncovers striking antecedents in the writings of Jewish scholars and rabbis of antiquity. Under foreign rule, they constructed a vision of earthly separation of powers that made law and the courts, not the crown, supreme.Trade ReviewThanks to the publication of this panoramic work, future scholars have a wealth of writing to consult in separating out the strands of thought in early Jewish imagination regarding legal–political philosophy. -- David Nimmer * Journal of the Church and State *A work of consummate scholarship. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to know about the origins and nature of the separation of powers—a fundamental doctrine of modern constitutionalism, especially in the United States…Flatto demonstrates that the modern doctrine of separation of powers originated in certain biblical texts. -- Arthur J. Jacobson * Journal of Law and Religion *This is a profound and sharp study, which succeeds in revealing the complexity of the textual world of ancient Judaism and the multiplicity of views that existed there, while at the same time presenting a clear thesis about a common trend these various texts shared…An outstanding achievement. -- Ishay Rosen-Zvi * Journal of the American Oriental Society *[A] work of exceptional scholarship…We look to historical texts in view of our present concerns whether this is the status of nonhuman animals, the norming of human capacities, or constitutional theory. The challenge is to construct an interpretation of those texts that is animated by our interests while open to those expressed by them in their diversity, complexity, and even inconsistency. In this, The Crown and the Courts is a remarkable success. -- Yonatan Y. Brafman * Journal of Religion *[Flatto’s] work will inspire some new directions in historical studies of the eras in question. His excellent readings, of Josephus and the tannaim in particular, are welcome additions to the scholarship on both. -- Natalie Dohrmann * Dead Sea Discoveries *Was Josephus doing constitutional theory when he claimed that ancient Israel was a unique, theocratic polity, ruled by God and his laws, not men? This rich and provocative book deploys skillful close readings to argue that Josephus, the rabbis, and other important post-biblical Jewish thinkers made distinctive contributions to constitutional thought, developing an original account of separated powers. Flatto’s book should be read as a prequel to Eric Nelson’s scholarship showing how early modern Western political thought received rabbinic ideas. -- Noah Feldman, author of Arab Winter: A TragedyShould justice be administered independently of political authority? Through detailed consideration of a wide range of ancient Jewish texts, David Flatto adds a necessary and relevant new dimension to current thinking about the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law. -- Timothy D. Lytton, author of Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial FoodThe Crown and the Courts offers us a learned and cogent analysis of the ways in which biblical and post-biblical Jewish sources sought to establish the independence of law from various forms of political authority. Flatto’s book is an important addition to the growing literature on rabbinic legal and political ideas. -- Eric Nelson, author of The Theology of Liberalism
£32.36
Princeton University Press Jewish Questions Responsa on Sephardic Life in
Book SynopsisIntroduces readers to the history and culture of the Sephardic dispersion through an exploration of forty-three responsa - questions about Jewish law that Jews asked leading rabbis, and the rabbis' responses.Trade Review"The selection of responsa in this book is a serious contribution to preserving not only memory of those responsa, but also perpetuating an understanding of the Jewish communities in which they were written."--Jay Levinson, Jewish Magazine "Taken on its merits ... this is a book that is not without charm, and will introduce general readers to a body of relatively unfamiliar and often graphically written sources."--Nichola De Lange, Journal of Jewish StudiesTable of ContentsPreface xi Introduction xvii Short Biographies of the Hakhamim lviii PART I: Life among Muslims and Christians Chapter 1: Caught in the Middle of Ottoman-Italian Wars (Greece, 1716) 5 Chapter 2: The Financial Fallout of a Blood Libel (Ragusa, 1622) 8 Chapter 3: A Blood Libel among the Sephardim (Ottoman Empire, mid-seventeenth century) 13 Chapter 4: Preparations for Siege (Algiers, 1732) 15 Chapter 5: The Jew Who Stood Up to the Governor--But Maybe Not Enough (Algiers, mid-eighteenth century) 16 PART II: Trade and Other Professions in the Sephardi Diaspora Chapter 6: An International Loan Gone Awry (Mediterranean, late-sixteenth century) 23 Chapter 7: The Woman with a Steel Welding Monopoly (Aleppo, ca. 1559) 26 Chapter 8: Death of a Salesman in Persia (Bursa and Persia, late sixteenth century) 29 Chapter 9: A Case of Mistaken Identity (Constantinople, late seventeenth century) 32 Chapter 10: The Death of Tall Aslan (Aleppo and Turkey, 1681) 35 Chapter 11: Egyptian Jews with Civet Cats (Egypt, mid-sixteenth century) 38 Chapter 12: Jewish Trade in a War Zone (Zante and Venice, ca. 1620) 39 Chapter 13: The Tale of the Clothier and the Vizier (Constantinople, 1641) 42 PART III: Life within the Sephardic Community Chapter 14: Divorce and an Indian Impostor (Greece, mid-sixteenth century) 53 Chapter 15: The Great Fire of Saloniki (Saloniki and Lepanto, 1620) 58 Chapter 16: An Apostate Soldier of Fortune (Zante, ca. 1620) 61 Chapter 17: The Fallout from a Tall Building (Ottoman Empire, early seventeenth century) 64 Chapter 18: Polish Fugitives in Egypt (Egypt, late seventeenth century) 66 Chapter 19: The Quarantine Colony in Spalato (Spalato, seventeenth century) 68 Chapter 20: Unscrupulous Partners and the Fear of Forced Conversion (Rhodes, early seventeenth century) 71 Chapter 21: A Change of Fortune, an Unwilling Wife, and a City in Panic (Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt, 1737) 73 Chapter 22: The Causes and Consequences of a Denunciation (Meknes, Morocco, 1721-1728) 77 Chapter 23: The Persecution of a Witness to Immorality (Tangier and Fez, 1744) 83 PART IV: Ritual Observance and Jewish Faith in Sephardic Communities Chapter 24: The Jew Accused of Heresy (Ottoman Empire, early sixteenth century) 93 Chapter 25: Jews Becoming Karaites and Karaites Becoming Jews (Egypt, late seventeenth century) 96 Chapter 26: Bequests of Conversos and Their Status as Jews (Istanbul, early sixteenth century) 99 Chapter 27: The Converso and the Charitable Fraternity (Amsterdam, late seventeenth century) 102 Chapter 28: Monstrous Births and Marvelous Creatures (Venice, mid-seventeenth century) 106 Chapter 29: Protestants Who Send Money to Poor Jews in the Land of Israel (Palestine, mid-seventeenth century) 109 Chapter 30: What May a Jew Do with a Nativity Medallion? (Greece, early sixteenth century) 112 Chapter 31: On Loaning Money to Priests (Jerusalem, ca. 1624) 115 Chapter 32: The Penitence of the Kastoria Community (Greece, late seventeenth century) 120 PART V: Marriage, Family, and Private Life Chapter 33: A Converso and His Flemish Concubine (Turkey, early sixteenth century) 127 Chapter 34: A Convert Repudiates Her Marriage (Ottoman Empire, early sixteenth century) 129 Chapter 35: The Melancholic Monogamist (Egypt, late seventeenth century) 131 Chapter 36: The Afflicted Bigamist (Morocco, early eighteenth century) 134 Chapter 37: A Suspicious Pregnancy (Shekhem [Nablus], Palestine, 1721) 136 Chapter 38: The Unrepentant Adulterer (Western Europe, 1730) 139 Chapter 39: A Slave among the Wars in Belgrade (Belgrade, late seventeenth century) 143 Chapter 40: A Sexually Abused Wife (Ottoman Empire, late seventeenth century) 147 Chapter 41: On the Manipulation of Women's Right to Divorce (Egypt, mid-seventeenth century) 150 Chapter 42: A Mother's Quest for Justice (Belgrade, 1698) 153 Chapter 43: The Runaway Groom (Bayonne, 1742) 155 Bibliography 159 Index 171
£27.00
Princeton University Press The First Modern Jew
Book SynopsisProvides a look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. This book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero.Trade ReviewCo-Winner of the 2012 Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize, American Academy for Jewish Research Finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in History "We have long needed a thorough and careful study of the various ways in which Spinoza has been appropriated by Jewish causes and movements. Daniel Schwartz's welcome book takes a close look for the first time at what the author calls 'the rehabilitation of Spinoza in Jewish culture.'"--Steven Nadler, Times Literary Supplement "Whether Baruch Spinoza was 'the first modern Jew,' as the title of this outstanding volume suggests, has been a subject of continuing debate... Schwartz displays admirable versatility in tracing the idolizations, disputes, and ambivalences evoked by Spinoza in Germany (Moses Mendelssohn and Berthold Auerbach) and eastern Europe (Salomon Rubin), within Zionism (Yosef Klausner), and in Yiddish literature (Isaac Bashevis Singer)... Essential."--M. A. Meyer, Choice "[P]assionate arguments, of the kind now richly documented by Schwartz, about Spinoza's Jewishness and his relevance to our times, still enrich and enrage ... and probably will continue to do so--without end."--Allan Nadler, Forward.com "This is the first full-scale history of Spinoza's reception among Jews... [I]t clearly demonstrates how this excluded philosopher could be viewed as religious or secular, as more Baruch or more Benedict, but almost necessarily as a touchstone in defining Jewish identity in the modern age."--Choice "With extensive and helpful notes, an index and a bibliography, this work is highly recommended for all academic collections that deal with Jews and Judaism in the modern age."--Marion M. Stein, Classical World "Schwartz has written a superb study that not only presents Spinoza as a thinker who fits uneasily into the modernist categories of 'religious' and 'secular': he has also composed a daring challenge to the popular interpretation of the modern age as a purely secular affair that left religion behind over 300 years ago."--Grant Havers, European LegacyTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi Note on Translations and Romanization xvii Introduction 1 Spinoza's Jewish Modernities Chapter 1: Ex-Jew, Eternal Jew: 15 Early Representations of the Jewish Spinoza Chapter 2: Refining Spinoza: 35 Moses Mendelssohn's Response to the Amsterdam Heretic Chapter 3: The First Modern Jew: 55 Berthold Auerbach's Spinoza and the Beginnings of an Image Chapter 4: A Rebel against the Past, A Revealer of Secrets: 81 Salomon Rubin and the East European Maskilic Spinoza Chapter 5: From the Heights of Mount Scopus: 113 Yosef Klausner and the Zionist Rehabilitation of Spinoza Chapter 6: Farewell, Spinoza: 155 I. B. Singer and the Tragicomedy of the Jewish Spinozist Epilogue: 189 Spinoza Redivivus in the Twenty-First Century Notes 203 Bibliography 247 Index 265
£46.75
Princeton University Press Maimonides in His World Portrait of a
Book SynopsisWhile the great medieval philosopher, theologian, and physician Maimonides is acknowledged as a leading Jewish thinker, his intellectual contacts with his surrounding world are often described as related primarily to Islamic philosophy. This title demonstrates that he was deeply influenced not only by Islamic philosophy but by Islamic culture.Trade Review"Stroumsa considerably broadens our understanding of Maimonides's Graeco-Arabic sources... Stroumsa does a fine job in bringing to life the Mediterranean setting in which Maimonides encountered this ideal, and tried to direct it towards the heart of Judaism. She challenges scholars of Jewish and Muslim thought to look beyond the artificial confines of their disciplines, and raises intriguing questions about the fluid intellectual boundaries of Jewish identity."--Carlos Fraenkel, Times Literary Supplement "Fascinating."--David Nirenberg, London Review of Books "The book is well written, presenting its dense material in an accessible way. Though there are many quotations in Arabic, nothing essential is left untranslated or unexplained. Stroumsa makes her points forcefully and persuasively, positioning Maimonides as a thinker of great importance to Muslims as well as to Jews."--Pinchas Roth, AJL Newsletter "Sarah Stroumsa's erudite and accessible Maimonidies in His World ... is an exceptional work of critical scholarship that remains readable and relevant beyond the ivory tower. Indeed, its true significance might be found among a more general readership... In the future conversations that are sure to ensue about Maimonides' place in contemporary Jewish life, Stroumsa's portrait will be a most welcome, indispensible guide."--Shai Secunda, Talmud Blog "Stroumsa is an intellectual historian whose mastery of her material is impressive on many levels... Maimonides in His World ... is a book that will be considered required reading for anyone who works on Maimonides' life and thought. Stroumsa's scholarship is much too good for anyone in the field to ignore."--Kenneth Seeskin, Shofar "The book delves into even more detail to discover many of Maimonides' innovations and the way in which they were enabled. Critical to Stroumsa's reading of Maimonides is her insistence that it is impossible to understand any of his texts without taking into account the scholarship of the Arabo-Islamic thinkers of his day."--David Shasha, Huffington Post "[T]he methodological underpinnings of Stroumsa's approach are rock-solid and eminently worthwhile. Stroumsa is never strident or lacking in critical self-reflection. For every bold position she stakes out, she raises the contra-indications and gives them their due. In trying to understand the personal biography, the intellectual, the theologian, the scientist, and the halakhic authority, Stroumsa has conceived the richest portrait yet of 'The Great Eagle.'"--Ronald C. Kiener, Journal of the American Oriental Society "Stroumsa brings her strengths as a scholar of Arabic thought to bear on Maimonides' biography and life's work."--Marc Herman, Sephardic HorizonsTable of ContentsPreface xi Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations xix Chapter One: Maimonides and Mediterranean Culture 1 Mediterranean Cultures 3 Maimonides as a Mediterranean Thinker 6 Horizons 13 Transformations in the Jewish World 18 Maimonides and Saadia 22 Chapter Two: The Theological Context of Maimonides' Thought 24 Islamic Theology 24 Heresies, Jewish and Muslim 38 Chapter Three: An Almohad "Fundamentalist"? 53 Almohads 53 Maimonides and the Almohads 59 Legal Aspects 61 Theology 70 Exegesis and Political Philosophy 73 Philosophy and Astronomy 80 Conclusion 82 Chapter Four: La Longue Duree: Maimonides as a Phenomenologist of Religion 84 Sabians 84 Maimonides as an Historian of Religion 106 "A Wise and Understanding People?": The Religion of the People 111 Chapter Five: A Critical Mind: Maimonides as Scientist 125 Medicine and Science 125 "Ravings": Maimonides' Concept of Pseudo-Science 138 Chapter Six: "From Moses to Moses": Maimonides' Vision of Perfection 153 "True Felicity": The Hereafter in Maimonides' Thought 153 Issues of Life and Death: The Controversy Regarding Resurrection 165 "Gates for the Righteous Nation": The Philosopher as Leader 183 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 193 Index 219
£27.00
Princeton University Press The Jewish Jesus
Book SynopsisReveals the crucial ways in which various Jewish heresies, including Christianity, affected the development of rabbinic Judaism. The author even shows that some of the ideas that the rabbis appropriated from Christianity were actually reappropriated Jewish ideas.Trade ReviewPeter Schafer, Winner of the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation "This volume combines several provocative theses. Schafer suggests that arguments in the Talmud against ostensibly heretical teachings are aimed not only at opponents of the rabbis but also at circles among the ancient rabbis themselves that found such teachings attractive... The author is a highly respected scholar of ancient Judaism, and the present book continues lines of thought that appeared in his earlier writings, including Jesus in the Talmud. This volume's presentation is erudite yet accessible. The arguments against scholars with other views are especially robust and forthright."--Choice "Schafer's book is very illuminating and fascinating. The author examines a rich collection of rabbinic texts, which shed light and better understanding on many concepts included in the Old and New Testaments. His emphasis on the geographical distinction between Palestine and Babylonia, in the evaluation of the rabbinic sources is worthy of attention... [T]he book is an excellent presentation of the mutual interaction between the sister religions and deserves an important place amongst the studies about early Judaism and Christianity."--Miroslaw S. Wrobel, Biblical Annals "There have been a number of revelatory books in recent decades on the relations between early Christianity and Judaism, especially on how each influenced the other. This book by Peter Schafer ... is among them."--Glenn W. Olsen, European LegacyTable of ContentsList of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Different Names of God 21 Offerings 22 Creation 24 R. Simlai's Collection of Dangerous Bible Verses 27 The Bavli Collection 37 R. Simlai and Christianity 42 Chapter 2. The Young and the Old God 55 Chapter 3. God and David 68 Aqiva in the Bavli 70 The David Apocalypse 85 David in Dura Europos 94 Chapter 4. God and Metatron 103 Rav Idith and the Heretics 104 Metatron the Great Scribe 115 The Celestial High Priest 116 The Prince of the World 123 The Instructor of Schoolchildren in Heaven 125 Two Powers in Heaven 127 Akatriel 131 Metatron in Babylonia 138 Metatron and Christianity 141 Chapter 5. Has God a Father, a Son, or a Brother? 150 Chapter 6. The Angels 160 When Were the Angels Created? 160 God's Consultation with the Angels 165 Angels and Revelation 179 Veneration of Angels 188 Chapter 7. Adam 197 Chapter 8. The Birth of the Messiah, or Why Did Baby Messiah Disappear? 214 The Arab 220 Elijah 222 The Messiah 223 The Mother of the Messiah 227 Christianity 228 Chapter 9. The Suffering Messiah Ephraim 236 Pisqa 34 238 Pisqa 36 242 Pisqa 37 261 Christianity 264 Notes 273 Bibliography 329 Index 343
£42.50
Princeton University Press The Hebrew Bible A Critical Companion
Book SynopsisThis is a general-interest introduction to the Old Testament from many disciplines. There are 23 essays with 23 individual reference lists.Trade Review"This collection provides a rich introduction to the Hebrew Bible for general readers, and is an invaluable companion for students and scholars."--Publishers Weekly "A compelling analysis of the document that embraces all phases of biblical scholarship, from every conceivable point of view."--John Mulryan, Cithara "The book is attractive and an easy read. Written by a group of contemporary scholars, the book will be a great aid to any student of the Old Testament."--Ralph Lee Scott, ARBATable of ContentsIntroduction ix John Barton List of Contributors xi Part I. The Hebrew Bible in Its Historical and Social Context 1 1. The Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament 3 John Barton 2. The Historical Framework 24 Biblical and Scholarly Portrayals of the Past Francesca Stavrakopoulou 3. The Social and Cultural History of Ancient Israel 54 Katherine Southwood 4. Israel in the Context of the Ancient Near East 86 Anthony J. Frendo Part II. Major Genres of Biblical Literature 107 5. The Narrative Books of the Hebrew Bible 109 Thomas Romer 6. The Prophetic Literature 133 R. G. Kratz 7. Legal Texts 160 Assnat Bartor 8. The Wisdom Literature 183 Jennie Grillo 9. The Psalms and Poems of the Hebrew Bible 206 Susan Gillingham Part III. Major Religious Themes 237 10. Monotheism 239 Benjamin D. Sommer 11. Creation 271 God and World Hermann Spieckermann 12. The Human Condition 293 Hilary Marlow 13. God's Covenants with Humanity and Israel 312 Dominik Markl 14. Ethics 338 C. L. Crouch 15. Religious Space and Structures 356 Stephen C. Russell 16. Ritual 378 Diet, Purity, and Sacrifice Seth D. Kunin Part IV. The Study and Reception of the Hebrew Bible 403 17. Reception of the Old Testament 405 Alison Gray 18. Historical-Critical Inquiry 431 Christoph Bultmann 19. Literary Approaches 455 David Jasper 20. Theological Approaches to the Old Testament 481 R.W.L. Moberly 21. Political and Advocacy Approaches 507 Eryl W. Davies 22. Textual Criticism and Biblical Translation 532 Carmel McCarthy 23. To Map or Not to Map? 556 A Biblical Dilemma Adrian Curtis Index of Scripture 575 Index of Modern Authors 589 Index of Subjects 596
£37.80
Princeton University Press The Prophetic Faith
Book SynopsisThe author brings to a focus his interpretation of biblical religion as an existential confrontation between God and man in which God calls man, individual and collectivee, to decision; man responds, and God judges.Trade Review"[In] The Prophetic Faith ... Buber does not get lost in the details of compositional, religious, or political history, nor does he hyperfocus on the exegesis of particular verses. Rather, his attention lies on what is most important to him, as it is to many today as well--the personally and socially transformative encounter with the eternal You."--Jon D. Levenson, Harvard Divinity SchoolTable of ContentsIntroduction to the 2016 Edition ix 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 THE SONG OF DEBORAH 10 3 ORIGINS 17 A The Shechem Assembly 17 B Mount Sinai 24 C YHVH and Israel 30 4 THE GOD OF THE FATHERS 38 5 HOLY EVENT 53 6 THE GREAT TENSIONS 74 A The Rule of God and the Rule of Man 74 B YHVH and the Baal 87 C The Struggle for the Revelation 99 7 THE TURNING TO THE FUTURE 119 A For the Sake of Righteousness .119 B For the Sake of Lovingkindness .137 C The Theopolitical Hour .156 8 THE GOD OF THE SUFFERERS 192 A Against the Sanctuary .192 B The Question .227 C The Mystery .251 Index of Scripture References 293
£22.50
Princeton University Press German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic
Book SynopsisIn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as German Jews struggled for legal emancipation and social acceptance, they also embarked on a program of cultural renewal, two key dimensions of which were distancing themselves from their fellow Ashkenazim in Poland and giving a special place to the Sephardim of medieval Spain. Where they saw Ashkenazic Jewry as insular and backward, a result of Christian persecution, they depicted the Sephardim as worldly, morally and intellectually superior, and beautiful, products of the tolerant Muslim environment in which they lived. In this elegantly written book, John Efron looks in depth at the special allure Sephardic aesthetics held for German Jewry.Efron examines how German Jews idealized the sound of Sephardic Hebrew and the Sephardim''s physical and moral beauty, and shows how the allure of the Sephardic found expression in neo-Moorish synagogue architecture, historical novels, and romanticized depictions of Sephardic history. He argTrade Review"Anyone who researches German-Jewish culture in the age of assimilation discovers a series of inner tensions that demand tactful handling and empathy. John Efron provides both in this wide-ranging book. His analysis of the conflict among Jews between Ashkenazic and Sephardic self-images makes a valuable corrective to simplified views of the past, and an essential contribution to the flourishing field of German-Jewish cultural history."--Ritchie Robertson, Times Literary Supplement "Challenging, invigorating, and inspiring, Professor John M. Efron's study opens up a swath of Jewish cultural history that is familiar to few scholars and fewer general readers... Efron's fine study, [is] at once erudite and accessible."--Philip K. Jason, Jewish Book Council "Efron is very precise and clear-eyed... [He] very convincingly locates Ashkenazi longing for Sephardic lustre in every field of artistic and intellectual endevour... Efron offers us a whole new way of looking at German Jewry."--Fabian Wolff, Jewish Quarterly "There have been studies dealing with aspects of the fascination that the Sephardic Jewish experience held for modernizing German Jews, but none as comprehensive and nuanced as this book, which considers the subject from the angles of language, aesthetics, character, physical features, synagogue architecture, belles lettres, and historiography... Efron's scholarship is impeccable, his writing fluent."--Choice "[This] is a beautiful book that reveals tremendous craftsmanship. Each chapter is a finely wrought marvel of crystalline prose, careful scholarship, and often exquisite analysis... No one can read this book without feeling their eyes opened wide to the remarkable range and complex motivations of 19th-century German Jewish Sephardism."--Jewish Review of BooksTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter One. The Sound of Jewish Modernity: Sephardic Hebrew and the Berlin Haskalah 21 Chapter Two. "Castilian Pride and Oriental Dignity": Sephardic Beauty in the Eye of the Ashkenazic Beholder 53 Chapter Three. Of Minarets and Menorahs: The Building of Oriental Synagogues 112 Chapter Four. Pleasure Reading: Sephardic Jews and the German-Jewish Literary Imagination 161 Chapter Five. Writing Jewish History: The Construction of a Glorious Sephardic Past 190 Epilogue 231 Notes 239 Bibliography 291 Index 321
£38.25
Princeton University Press Does Judaism Condone Violence
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson""Mittleman presents Jews and all those with a more spiritual, religious, value-seeking bent much to think about in their efforts to sanctify their lives."---James A. Diamond, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"A carefully and lucidly argued book about the relationship between violence, holiness, and Judaism."---Martin Shuster, Reading Religion
£29.75
Princeton University Press The Children of Abraham
Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2005""As John L. Esposito makes clear in his helpful foreword, Professor F.E. Peters' revision of this important, accessible discussion of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is a welcome contribution for a new generation of readers facing an international political environment where respectful engagement is imperative." * Jewish Book World *"The new edition of Francis E. Peters' The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam . . . is written in a direct and accessible style with thorough and nuanced discussions of each of the three Abrahamic traditions. . . . We have to try our best to understand other religions and our own. Perhaps Peters' book can help us in this."---Horst Jesse, European Legacy
£15.29
