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The Spanish and Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam cultivated a remarkable culture centred on the Bible: school children studied the Bible systematically, while rabbinic literature was pushed to levels reached by few students; adults met in confraternities to study Scripture; and families listened to Scripture-based sermons in synagogue, and to help pass the long, cold winter nights of northwest Europe. The community's rabbis produced creative, and often unprecedented scholarship on the Jewish Bible as well as the New Testament. Amsterdam's People of the Book shows that this unique, Bible-centred culture resulted from the confluence of the Jewish community's Catholic and converso past with the Protestant world in which they came to live. Studying Amsterdam's Jews offers an early window into the prioritization of the Bible over rabbinic literature -- a trend that continues through modernity in western Europe. It allows us to see how Amsterdam's rabbis experimented with new historical methods for understanding the Bible, and how they grappled with doubts about the authority and truth of the Bible that were growing in the world around them. Amsterdam's People of the Book allows us to appreciate how Benedict Spinoza's ideas were in fact shaped by the approaches to reading the Bible in the community where he was born, raised, and educated. After all, as Spinoza himself remarked, before becoming Amsterdam's most famous heretic and one of Europe's leading philosophers and biblical critics, he was "steeped in the common beliefs about the Bible from childhood on."

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Hebrew Union College Annual is the flagship journal of Hebrew Union College Press and the primary face of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion to the academic world. From its inception in 1924, its goal has been to cultivate Jewish learning and facilitate the dissemination of cutting-edge scholarship across the spectrum of Jewish Studies, including Bible, Rabbinics, Language and Literature, History, Philosophy, and Religion.

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In this volume of essays, eminent Jewish scholars from around the world present introductions to the different parts of the Bible for the wider public. The essays encompass a general introduction to the Torah in Jewish life, and include specific essays on each of the Five Books of Moses, as well as on the Haftarot, Neviim, and Ketuvim. The contributions provide an overview of the core content of each book as well as highlighting central themes and the reception and relevance of these themes in Jewish life and culture past and present. These essays, informed by and based on the profound academic research of their authors, together provide an invaluable bridge between high-level academic insight and the study of the Bible both in synagogues and in homes.

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Before the Enlightenment, before Spinoza had rejected traditional beliefs about the Bible, came the humanistic sceptics of the Renaissance. Alongside oft-cited Christian thinkers, Eliezer Eilburg now takes his rightful place. Comparable in view to Christopher Marlowe or Noël Journet, Eilburg perhaps uniquely represents the possibilities of Jewish scepticism in his day. Eliezer Eilburg: The Ten Questions and Memoir of a Renaissance Jewish Skeptic makes available for the first time a bilingual edition of two key works by the Jewish rationalist sceptic, kabbalist, and memoirist, Eliezer Eilburg. The text of the two works by Eilburg is presented in English translation and in the original Hebrew. The Ten Questions--addressed to the Maharal of Prague and two of his colleagues--is one of the most radical statements of Jewish scepticism written in the sixteenth century. Published here in its entirety, this text is especially remarkable for its critical approach to the Bible, foreshadowing later intellectual trends. Although many of his opinions were considered heretical by Jewish authorities, Eilburg argued that his doubts were innocent, and that there was room within Judaism for his scepticism. He presented himself as a penitent whose eyes had been opened through the study of medicine and philosophy and who had merited angelic visions and kabbalistic dreams. The second text, Eilburg's experimental memoir, is one of the very first modern Jewish efforts at autobiography. Put together from many smaller pieces, this patchwork of brag and bile is a unique document of sixteenth-century Jewish life. It is a testimony, if not to the "emergence of the individual" in this period, then at least to the emergence of new Jewish ways of imagining and writing about the self. Eilburg was an enigmatic man, a unique and as yet mostly unstudied Jewish thinker. Though his works are directed to audiences of Jews, and argue for the improvement of Judaism, this volume will appeal to historians and scholars of intellectual traditions both in and outside of Jewish studies.

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The French Revolution brought the promise of equality to many oppressed groups living in France. French Jews, long persecuted and considered to be a separate nation, sought to benefit from the new freedoms promised by the Revolution. The inspiring story of Jacques Godard, set during the dramatic years of the Revolution, shows how one determined individual can be a catalyst for lasting and meaningful change. Jewish leaders engaged the services of Jacques Godard, a 27-year-old Catholic lawyer, who had previously defended a slave seeking his freedom, a Protestant defending his property rights, and other disadvantaged individuals. As the official lawyer and lobbyist for the Ashkenazi French Jewish community, Godard ultimately persuaded the Paris Municipal Assembly to become an important advocate in favour of equal rights for Jews, and, within two tumultuous years, the campaign for Jewish equality achieved its goal: Jews became equal citizens of France. Gerard Leval has performed an important service by describing the life of a young man who lived more than two hundred years ago and fought for causes for which we still struggle today.

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Hebrew Union College Annual is the flagship journal of Hebrew Union College Press and the primary face of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion to the academic world. From its inception in 1924, its goal has been to cultivate Jewish learning and facilitate the dissemination of cutting-edge scholarship across the spectrum of Jewish Studies, including Bible, Rabbinics, Language and Literature, History, Philosophy, and Religion.

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One hundred and fifteen kilometers northeast of Lisbon an assembly convened at the Convent of Christ in the city of Tomar in the Spring of 1629. This assembly of ecclesiastical dignitaries and professors of theology and canon law met at the Assembly of Tomar with the mission to formulate a solution to Portugal’s “Jewish problem,” which according to many, had escalated completely out of control. It was a problem for the authorities indeed, since Jews were not permitted to reside in Portugal since 1497, when they were forced to convert. These “New Christians” and their descendants allegedly held on to their Jewish beliefs and practices. The Inquisitors then sought to expunge the Judaizers. The New Christians opposed the introduction of the Inquisition and when they failed, they consistently sought to delimit its authority. The papacy repeatedly decided to support the New Christians, which was typically viewed as an example of Rome’s lust for money. The New Christians denied allegations of connection with Jewish practices and belief. Instead, they pointed to their Catholic loyalty—donations to Catholic causes, endowment of Catholic shrines, entry of their daughters into convents, and even their cries to Jesus and Mary on the way to the stake. An adequate reconstruction of the “Marrano phenomenon” (the life of the New Christians) requires knowledge of a variety of documents. The many inquisitional trial records comprise the most important, but are only a fraction of all the primary documents necessary for the complex picture of New Christians. Cohen contributes to this picture by examining a critical document hitherto largely unfamiliar to the scholarly world, the Report from the Assembly of Tomar.

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Abraham Geiger gave the Reform Movement in Judaism its intellectual stature and theoretical justification. He possessed rabbinic learning, profound interest in problems of theology and philosophy, a gift for exposition, and great earnestness. All these he enlisted in the service of Judaism-a Judaism transplanted into the climate of nineteenth-century Germany. His struggle against the traditionalists forms an interesting chapter in the history of German Jewry, yet is now of even greater interest to American Jews, because Geiger ultimately found more convinced and ardent followers on this side of the Atlantic than he had had in Europe. The late Dr. Max Wiener was a keen student of Jewish intellectual history. An admirer of Geiger, his biographical introduction to this volume is sympathetic and balanced. But the real Geiger-a great scholar, profound thinker, and ardent Jew-emerges from the excerpts of his own writings to which the major portion of this book is devoted. The reader will find here illustrations of Geiger's viewpoint as he wrote to friends, as he delved into the origins of the biblical text, as he engaged in religious polemics, and as he addressed his own congregation, trying to draw them on the principles for which he labored. This reprint edition will be of interest to anyone who seeks to understand the intellectual roots of liberal Judaism.

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Benny Kraut's primary aim was to reconstruct the history of a relatively unknown and short-lived Jewish collegiate organization, Yavneh: The National Jewish Religious Students Association, particularly during its heyday in the 1960s. But he found a story within his story. The story of Yavneh-its surprising appearance in 1960, its mission and organizational efflorescence, its stunning educational innovations, its problematic engagement with inter-Jewish pluralism, and its lamentable but understandable demise in the early 1980s-is told within the context of an evolving American Orthodox Judaism. During these very decades, American Orthodoxy simultaneously underwent a remarkable religious revival and a deep-seated religious polarization, trends that Yavneh's history exposes in bold relief. In so many intellectual, religious, and cultural ways, Yavneh and its members and supporters contributed significantly to the modern Orthodox revitalization. But the organization and its students experienced the gamut of internal Orthodox divisions over religious ideology, educational priorities, and openness to non-Orthodox movements and secular culture. Yavneh serves as an illuminating historical marker by which to probe the broader Orthodox vicissitudes of the day. Benny Kraut's historical account brings this singular organization to public consciousness and offers a revealing glimpse of American Orthodox Judaism at a critical juncture in its recent growth.

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Although Kant considered him the greatest critic of his work, and Fichte thought him the most impressive mind of the generation, Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) has fallen into relative obscurity. Apiqoros: The Last Essays of Salomon Maimon draws attention to works written during the final years of Maimon's life. These essays are of particular interest: they show that even though Maimon was a self-proclaimed apiqoros grappling with the implications of Kantian philosophy, his thinking remained deeply influenced by his Jewish intellectual inheritance, especially by Maimonides, the medieval Sephardic philosopher. The volume is divided into two parts. The first is a general account of Maimon's intellectual biography, along with commentary on his final essays. The second part provides translations of those essays, the principal themes of which concern moral psychology. The reader is thus able to see the degree to which Maimon, at the end of his life, became sceptical of his effort to unite Kant and Maimonides, and remained a thinker caught "between two worlds." The book concludes with a translation of an account of Maimon's final hours, penned by one of his friends.

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The report of the Avraham Biran (1975-1982) and Rudolf Cohen (1975-1976) archaeological excavations of Tel 'Aroer in the Negev Desert.

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Based on the Mason Lectures delivered at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the winter of 1995, the ten essays in this volume demonstrate the function and dynamic effect Jewish mythologies in social, political, and psychological life. Eli Yassif's introduction illustrates the complex relationship between myth and ritual in modern Jewish culture. In a separate essay, he focuses on the ancient Jewish tale of the Golem, a myth that presents an exemplary test case for the exploration of cultural continuity. Using the testimonies of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain and the battle on the plain of Latrun in the Israeli War of Independence, David Cesarani and Anita Shapira demonstrate that the process of creating myth is related in one way or another to attempts by specific social and ethnic groups to shape their collective memory. Along these lines, Milton Shain and Sally Frankental interrogate the view that during the apartheid period in South African history, South African Jewry operated on a higher moral plane than most other white South Africans. And while Nurith Gertz examines the male superhero that dominated the early national Zionist cinema and reflected the center of gravity in the Zionist myth, Dan Urian analyzes two Israeli plays produced in the 1990s that examine the myth of the biblical Sarah, rewritten from a feminist perspective. Other essays examine widely held cultural beliefs of contemporary Western Jewry. Jonathan Webber questions whether memory is an essentially Jewish value and remembrance a Jewish moral duty. Tudor Parfitt explores Western and Israeli perceptions of the Yemenite Jews, and Sylvie Anne Goldberg, in examining the evolving role of the chevrah kaddisha in Prague, discusses changes in perceptions of communal institutions and traditional and modern Jewish attitudes with regard to death. Finally, Matthew Olshan offers an analysis of Kafka's animal fables as parables for the Jewish response to tradition.

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Tel Maresha is located in the foothills of Israel's Judaean Mountains. It was established in the Iron Age II (circa 700 BCE) and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 15:44; I Chron. 2:42). But it was mainly a Hellenistic-period town—a major Idumean political and administrative centre. One of the unique and fascinating aspects of Maresha is its subterranean city—hundreds of underground galleries and chambers filled to the gills with artifacts. This volume is a report of the excavations of one of these rich subterranean complexes—SC 169—which contained a full corpus of Hellenistic pottery forms, both local and exotic altars, figurines, amulets, seals and seal impressions, hundreds of inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic, coins, jewelry and much more. These finds tell the story of an affluent cosmopolitan society comprised of Idumeans, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Jews, who lived together in a vibrant urban setting until the city was destroyed, probably by the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom in 104 BCE.

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David Darshan of Cracow was the first of the itinerant Jewish preachers whose works were published. He was a Renaissance man in a very real sense. Preacher, scholar, artist, healer, scribe, mystic, editor, commentator, and bibliophile (and father of five daughters), he tried in vain to establish an academy but failed because he was on the wrong side of the establishment. He was involved in the reintroduction of the printing of Hebrew books in Poland in 1569. He wrote a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, as well as a spirited defense of preaching and the preacher's art, and copied and illustrated a magnificent Kabbalistic manuscript. He wandered through Germany, Bohemia, and Russia; spent time in Italy during the period of the printing of the Zohar and the banning of the Talmud; served as scholar-in-residence at the home of a wealthy Jewish banking family; returned to Cracow to become the town darshan; and set out for Safed to join the community of Kabbalists and await the Messiah. This account of his background and translation of two almost forgotten books, Shir haMa'a lot l'David and Ktav Hitnazzelut l'Darshanim - a collection of sermons, response, poems, model letters to distinguished persons, efforts to fund an academy, a sourcebook for would-be preachers, and a defense of the craft - lifts the curtain on the inner life of the Jewish world in the late Middle Ages. The reproduction of the Hebrew texts of two books that have all but disappeared places a valuable resource in the hands of scholars. The cover illustration for the volume is by David Darshan and appears in the manuscript of Perush hYeri'ah haG'dolah, a commentary on the Ten Spheres, which he copied, illustrated, and signed in Modena in 1556. It depicts Rabbi Akiva, surrounded by the four creatures of Ezekiel's chariot vision, standing between the sketch of the universe and the spherotic tree. The manuscript is evidence of David's skill as scribe and artist.

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Minhag (custom) played a far greater and far more important role in medieval Ashkenazic society than in any other Jewish community. In upholding the authority of a custom, halakhic authorities frequently asserted that "custom prevails over halakhah." Furthermore, Ashkenazic authorities asserted that Ashkenazic custom is more authentic than the customs of other Jewish communities, including those of Sepharad (Spain). Given the importance attributed to minhag and the influence of the siddur commentaries of the circle of Hassidei Ashkenaz, which emphasize the precise formulation of liturgical texts, one might assume that Ashkenazic Jewry was committed to preserving ancestral custom and opposed to liturgical change. However, the reality is that the liturgy of Ashkenaz was never static. From a very early time, new liturgies and liturgical practices were incorporated into the service, the inclusion of various prayers was challenged, and variant readings of prayers became standard. Tradition, Interpretation, and Change focuses on developments in the Ashkenazic rite, the liturgical rite of most of central and eastern European Jewry, from the eleventh century through the seventeenth. Kenneth Berger argues that how a prayer or practice was understood, or the rationale for its recitation or performance, often had a profound effect on whether and when it was to be recited, as well as on the specific wording of the prayer. In some cases, the formulation of new interpretations served a conservative function, as when rabbinic authorities sought to find new, alternative explanations which would justify the continued performance of practices whose original rationale no longer applied. In other cases, new understandings of a liturgical practice led to changes in that practice, and even to the development of new liturgies expressive of those interpretations. In Tradition, Interpretation, and Change, Berger draws upon a wide body of primary sources, including classical rabbinic and geonic works, liturgical documents found in the Cairo genizah, medieval codes, responsa, and siddur commentaries, minhag books, medieval siddur manuscripts, and early printed siddurim, as well as a wealth of secondary sources, to provide the reader with an in-depth account of the history and history of interpretation of many familiar and not-so-familiar prayers and liturgical practices. While emphasizing the role that the interpretation ascribed to various prayers and practices had in shaping the liturgy of medieval and early modern Ashkenaz, Berger illustrates the degree to which Sephardic and kabbalistic influences, concern for the fate of the dead, the fear of demons, and the desire for healing and divine protection from a variety of dangers shaped both liturgical practice and the way in which those practices were understood.

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In late 2013, preeminent Hebrew poet Tuvia Ruebner published his fifteenth poetry collection, which he titled Last Ones. But it was not his last; he continued writing and publishing, even into the summer of his death in 2019. The translated poems in Now at the Threshold: The Late Poems of Tuvia Ruebner are from Ruebner's final three collections, poems all written from 2014 onward, after the poet's 90th birthday. Translated into English by award-winning translator Rachel Tzvia Back, these late and last poems both celebrate life's enduring small graces and converse quietly-even negotiate- with death. With love and loss ever intertwined, and a protesting voice still fierce, this collection offers the reader illuminating and beautiful poetry from a great humanist and a great poet.

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