Description
Book SynopsisA collection of essays exploring the subject of friendship in Jewish culture, history, and religion from ancient Israel to the twenty-first century.
Trade Review“This volume’s pattern of frequently pairing the overarching identity of Jewishness alongside an additional identity varying by chapter (socioeconomic, gender, interfaith, race, etc.) cuts right to the heart of human connection, developing implications beyond the Jewish tradition and community. ... This work truly understands friendship as a phenomenon to be experienced rather than one to be analyzed in isolation and written into the text.”
—Michael Tofte Religious Studies Review
“This book definitely contributes to the scholarly conversation in Jewish studies by connecting in multiple ways to issues of Jewish literature, history, and religion. The diversity of themes and methodological orientations in the chapters mirrors the diversity to be found in the field of Jewish studies and therefore will have great resonance among scholars and students of Jewish studies.”
—Ira Robinson,editor of Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century
“This innovative and accessible anthology highlights the significance of a frequently neglected facet of Jewish life. I know of no other scholarly work that explores the varieties of human friendship in such a wide range of Jewish sources. The attention to gender is particularly noteworthy and adds immensely to the value and interest of this important volume.”
—Judith R. Baskin,author of Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction: Studying Friendship in Jewish History, Religion, and Culture
Lawrence Fine
Part 1: Love, Intimacy, and Friendship Between Men
1. “Cherished in Life, for They Loved Each Other Exceedingly”:
Friendship in Medieval Ashkenaz
Eyal Levinson
2. God in the Face of the Other: Mystical Friendship in the Zohar
Eitan P. Fishbane
3. Friendship and Gender: The Limits and Possibilities of Jewish Philosophy
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
Part 2: Women and the Bonds of Friendship
4. “She and Her Friends”: On Women’s Friendship in Biblical Narrative
Saul M. Olyan
5. Friends and Friendship in the Memoir of Glückel of Hameln:
Learning from Experience
Joseph Davis
6. “Got Yourself Some Friends? Now Build a Movement!” Friendship in the Jewish Women’s Movement in the United States
Martha Ackelsberg
Part 3: Friendship and its Challenges
7. Jacob and Esau: Twinship, Identity, and Failed Friendship
George Savran
8. Hebraica Amicitia: Leon Modena and the Cultural Practices of Early Modern Intra-Jewish Friendship
Michela Andreatta
9. Friendship and Betrayal: Hasidism and Secularism in Early
Twentieth-Century Poland
Glenn Dynner
Part 4: Crossing Boundaries: Friendship Between Women and Men, and Between Jews and Gentiles
10. Interfaith Encounters Between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework
Daniel Jütte
11. Friendship, Jewish Female Philosophers, and Feminism
Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
12. A Friendship in the Prophetic Tradition: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr.
Susannah Heschel
List of Contributors
Index
