Throughout history, Jews have often been regarded, and treated, as "strangers." In The Stranger in Early Modern and Modern Jewish Tradition, authors from a wide variety of disciplines discuss how the notion of "the stranger" can offer an integrative perspective on Jewish identities, on the non-Jewish perceptions of Jews, and on the relations between Jews and non-Jews in an innovative way. Contributions from history, philosophy, religion, sociology, literature, and the arts offer a new perspective on the Jewish experience in early modern and modern times: in contact and conflict, in processes of attribution and allegation, but also self-reflection and negotiation, focused on the figure of the stranger.

No matter what we would make of Jesus, says Schalom Ben-Chorin, he was first a Jewish man in a Jewish land. Brother Jesus leads us through the twists and turns of history to reveal the figure who extends a "brotherly hand" to the author as a fellow Jew. Ben-Chorin's reach is astounding as he moves easily between literature, law, etymology, psychology, and theology to recover "Jesus' picture from the Christian overpainting." A commanding scholar of the historical Jesus who also devoted his life to widening Jewish-Christian dialogue, Ben-Chorin ranges across such events as the wedding at Cana, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion to reveal, in contemporary Christianity, traces of the Jewish codes and customs in which Jesus was immersed. Not only do we see how and why these events also resonate with Jews, but we are brought closer to Christianity in its primitive state: radical, directionless, even pagan. Early in his book, Ben-Chorin writes, "the belief of Jesus unifies us, but the belief in Jesus divides us." It is the kind of paradox from which arise endless questions or, as Ben-Chorin would have it, endless opportunities for Jews and Christians to come together for meaningful, mutual discovery.

The widespread assumption that Jewish religious tradition is mediated through words, not pictures, has left Jewish art with no significant role to play in Jewish theology and ethics. "Judaism and the Visual Image" argues for a Jewish theology of image that, among other things, helps us re-read the creation story in Genesis 1 and to question why images of Jewish women as religious subjects appear to be doubly suppressed by the Second Commandment, when images of observant male Jews have become legitimate, even iconic, representations of Jewish holiness. Raphael further suggests that 'devout beholding' of images of the Holocaust is a corrective to post-Holocaust theologies of divine absence from suffering that are infused by a sub-theological aesthetic of the sublime. Raphael concludes by proposing that the relationship between God and Israel composes itself into a unitary dance or moving image by which each generation participates in a processive revelation that is itself the ultimate work of Jewish art.

Over half of all American Jewish children are being raised by intermarried parents. This demographic group will have a tremendous impact on American Judaism as it is lived and practiced in the coming decades. To date, however, in both academic studies about Judaism and in the popular imagination, such children and their parents remain marginal. Jennifer A. Thompson takes a different approach. In Jewish on Their Own Terms , she tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Thompson notes that in the dominant Jewish cultural narrative, intermarriage symbolizes individualism and assimilation. Talking about intermarriage allows American Jews to discuss their anxieties about remaining distinctively Jewish despite their success in assimilating into American culture. In contrast, Thompson uses ethnography to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality. She explains how American and traditional Jewish gender roles converge to put non-Jewish women in charge of raising Jewish children. Interfaith couples are like other Americans in often harboring contradictory notions of individual autonomy, universal religious truths, and obligations to family and history. Focusing on the lived experiences of these families, Jewish on Their Own Terms provides a complex and insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing.

In the last several decades since the first publications of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, a revolution has occurred in the understanding of the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible during the Second Temple period. The present volume is a collection of articles documenting that revolution, written by Sidnie White Crawford over an almost thirty-year period beginning in 1990. As a member of the editorial team responsible for publishing the Qumran scrolls, the author was responsible for the critical editions of nine Deuteronomy scrolls and the four Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts; thus, her work played a critical role in the changing understanding of the textual history of the Pentateuch,especially the book of Deuteronomy and the Rewritten Bible texts. The author's lifework is brought together here in an accessible format. While the majority of the articles are reprints, the volume will close with two major new pieces: a text-critical study of the Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the Temple Scroll and a comprehensive overview of the history of the text of the Pentateuch.

Judaic reasoning is discussed from the standpoint of modern logic. Andrew Schumann defines Judaic logic, traces Aristotelian influence on developing Jewish studies in Judaic reasoning, and shows the non-Aristotelian core of fundamentals of Judaic logic. Further, Schumann proposes some modern approaches to understanding and formalizing Judaic reasoning, including Judaic semantics and (non-Aristotelian) syllogistics.

In The Qumran Manuscripts of Lamentations: A Text-Critical Study, the first large-scale investigation of the topic, Gideon Kotze establishes how the four Lamentations manuscripts from Qumran present the content of the biblical book. Kotze takes as his point of departure the contributions of the Dead Sea scrolls to the discipline of Old Testament textual criticism and treats the Qumran manuscripts of Lamentations, the Masoretic text and the ancient translations as witnesses to the content of the book and not only as witnesses to earlier forms of its Hebrew text. By focusing the analysis on variant readings and textual difficulties, the study arrives at a better understanding of these manuscripts as representatives of both the text and the content of Lamentations.

Top World Guild Award Winner This book is about an idea-namely, that Scripture mandates a Jewish return to the historical region of Palestine-which in turn morphed into a political movement, rallied around a popular slogan ("A country without a nation for a nation without a country"), and eventually contributed to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Christian Zionism continues to influence global politics, especially U.S. foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish-Christian and Muslim-Christian relations. Donald M. Lewis seeks to provide a fair-minded, longitudinal study of this dynamic yet controversial movement as he traces its lineage from biblical sources through the Reformation to various movements of today. He explores Christian Zionism's interaction with other movements, forces, and discourses, especially in eschatological and political thought, and why it is now flourishing beyond the English-speaking world. Throughout he demonstrates how it has helped British and American Protestants frame and shape their identity. A Short History of Christian Zionism seeks to bring clarity and context to often-heated discussions.

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics. This volume explores a variety of issues implicating morality for both individual commercial activity and economic public policy. Issues examined include price controls, the living wage, the lemons problem, short selling, and Ronald Coase's seminal theories on negative externalities. To provide an analytic framework for the study of these issues, the work first delineates the normative theories behind the concept of economic morality for welfare economics and Jewish law, and presents a case study illustrating the deontological nature of Jewish law. The book introduces what for many readers will be a new perspective on familiar economic issues. Despite the very different approaches of welfare economics and Jewish law in evaluating the worthiness of an economic action, the author reveals a remarkable symmetry between the two systems in their ultimate prescriptions for certain economic issues.

A Novice's Guide Through the Jewish Holidays explores the traditions, historical events along with Hebrew blessings in transliteration of the holidays for all people of diverse faiths and learning skills. The book engages and encourages the reader to become comfortable practicing the observances of the holidays. This guide will inspire and enlighten multi-generational and interfaith families to learn together. There are recipes and decorations to enhance the richness and beauty of each holiday. The special gift of this book is to bring a better understanding of the Jewish people's rich heritage. May your thirst for knowledge never be quenched

The Book of Ben Sira comes to us in a bewildering variety of ancient textual forms. Each version shows how the book was received and interpreted in a new situation and by another community of readers. The present volume contains studies by some of the best specialists in this field of research. Each of the ancient text forms of Ben Sira Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Latin is studied in its proper context and analysed in regard to what explains the typical changes it contains.

Jewish thought is, in many ways, a paradox. Is it theology or is it philosophy? Does it use universal methods to articulate Judaism's particularity or does it justify Judaism's particularity with appeals to illuminating the universal? These two sets of claims are difficult if not impossible to reconcile, and their tension reverberates throughout the length and breadth of Jewish philosophical writing, from Saadya Gaon in the ninth century to Emmanuel Levinas in the twentieth. Rather than assume, as most scholars of Jewish philosophy do, that the terms "philosophy" and "Judaism" simply belong together, Hughes explores the juxtaposition and the creative tension that ensues from their cohabitation, examining adroitly the historical, cultural, intellectual, and religious filiations between Judaism and philosophy. Breaking with received opinion, this book seeks to challenge the exclusionary, particularist, and essentialist nature that is inherent to the practice of something problematically referred to as "Jewish philosophy." Hughes begins with the premise that Jewish philosophy is impossible and begins the process of offering a sophisticated and constructive rethinking of the discipline that avoids the traditional extremes of universalism and particularism.

The volume explores the stone carved shrines for the scrolls of the Mosaic Law from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century synagogues in the former Polish Kingdom. Created on the margin of mainstream art and at a crossroad of diverse cultures, artistic traditions, aesthetic attitudes and languages, these indoor architectural structures have hitherto not been the subject of a monographic study. Revisiting and integrating multiple sources, the author re-evaluates the relationship of the Jewish culture in Renaissance Poland with the medieval Jewish heritage, sepulchral art of the Polish court and nobles, and earlier adaptations of the Christian revival of classical antiquity by Italian Jews. The book uncovers the evolution of artistic patronage, aesthetics, expressions of identities, and emerging visions among a religious minority on the cusp of the modern age.