Introduces the key concept of the Jewish community through stories interviews and activities.

.Breitowitz focuses on what many regard as the cutting issue of Jewish law as it grapples with the disintegrative forces of twentieth-century life: the problem of the Agunah or stranded wife. In addition, the Agunah issue raises intriguing questions about the impotence of religious law in a secular society and how the establishment and free exercise clauses intersect to facilitate or hinder the accommodation of religious interests.

All legal avenues available to secure relief are discussed, including the use of prenuptial agreements, the application of tort theory, and the rather exotic approach of the New York Get law, as well as the constitutional and common law impediments, to the implementation of these remedies. The text also includes comparative law material to illustrate how other legal systems, particularly the state of Israel, have handled this problem. As the most comprehensive book on the subject, it is invaluable to students of Jewish and family law and to practitioners of family law.

The Nun in the Synagogue documents the religious and cultural phenomenon of Judeocentric Catholicism that arose in the wake of the Holocaust, fueled by survivors who converted to Catholicism and immigrated to Israel as well as by Catholics determined to address the anti-Judaism inherent in the Church. Through an ethnographic study of selected nuns and monks, Emma O'Donnell Polyakov explores how this Judeocentric Catholic phenomenon began and continues to take shape in Israel. This book is a case study in Catholic perceptions of Jews, Judaism, and the state of Israel during a time of rapidly changing theological and cultural contexts. In it, Polyakov listens to and analyzes the stories of individuals living on the border between Christian and Jewish identity-including Jewish converts to Catholicism who continue to harbor a strong sense of Jewish identity and philosemitic Catholics who attend synagogue services every Shabbat. Polyakov traces the societal, theological, and personal influences that have given rise to this phenomenon and presents a balanced analysis that addresses the hermeneutical problems of interpreting Jews through Christian frameworks. Ultimately, she argues that, despite its problems, this movement signals a pluralistic evolution of Catholic understandings of Judaism and may prove to be a harbinger of future directions in Jewish-Christian relations. Highly original and methodologically sophisticated, The Nun in the Synagogue is a captivating exploration of biographical narratives and reflections on faith, conversion, Holocaust trauma, Zionism, and religious identity that lays the groundwork for future research in the field.

In The Names of God, as in his previous study, Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics (OUP, 1992), Herbert Brichto continues to argue against the atomistic readings of the Hebrew Bible by the currently dominant schools of Biblical scholarship. He maintains, that despite the repetitions and self contradictions found in the Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch possesses an aesthetic and ideological wholeness. Its harmonious blend of stories and structures inform one another as they give shape and meaning to the relationship and expectations between a benevolent God and recalcitrant humankind. In particular, Bichto focuses his "poetic" reading on the Book of Genesis. He uses the methods of contemporary literary criticism to examine one of the greatest inconsistencies within Genesis, the alternating use of Yahweh (the Lord) and Elohim (God) as names for the Deity. Often cited as the proof of multiple authorship, Brichto shows, instead, that this "inconsistency" serves as a device for a single author, using the specific name that is appropriate to each specific story. Brichto then proceeds to overturn other multiple-author proofs, including variations in genealogies, eponyms, and chronologies. He shows that their variety, ingenuity, and imaginative whimsy serve a vital poetic function in the structure of the text as a whole. Finding a unity in this diversity of genres, styles, and devices, Brichto overturns many of the assumptions of current scholarship as he solidifies his thesis of single authorship.

The occurrence of treaties throughout the Ancient Near East has been investigated on a number of occasions, generally in order to resolve certain questions arising in the biblical field. As a result of that focus, the existence of a similar institution in a number of different cultures has not been treated as a problem in itself. Generally the existence of treaties throughout the area has been taken for granted, or a simple borrowing model has been used to explain how similar forms came to be used in different cultures. Why forms were similar across the area has not been probed. This work investigates treaty occurrences in different cultures and finds that the forms used correlate with ways of maintaining political control both internally and over vassals. Related concepts are projected in official accounts of history. Thus one can roughly distinguish threats based on power from persuasion based on benevolence and historical precedent, though various combinations of these two occur. There is a likely further connection of the means chosen to the degree of centralisation of power within the society. Underlying the local traditions is a common tradition which has to be dated to the pre-literate period. Biblical covenants fit within this pattern. The cultures treated are Mesopotamia, the Hittites, Egypt, Syrian centres and Israel.

In the course of the nineteenth century, the boundaries that divided Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany were redrawn, challenged, rendered porous and built anew. This book addresses this redrawing. It considers the relations of three religious groups-Protestants, Catholics, and Jews-and asks how, by dint of their interaction, they affected one another.Previously, historians have written about these communities as if they lived in isolation. Yet these groups coexisted in common space, and interacted in complex ways. This is the first book that brings these separate stories together and lays the foundation for a new kind of religious history that foregrounds both cooperation and conflict across the religious divides. The authors analyze the influences that shaped religious coexistence and they place the valences of co-operation and conflict in deep social and cultural contexts. The result is a significantly altered understanding of the emergence of modern religious communities as well as new insights into the origins of the German tragedy, which involved the breakdown of religious coexistence.

The biblical idea of a distinct 'Jewish contribution to civilization' continues to engage Jews and non-Jews alike. This book seeks neither to document nor to discredit the notion, but rather to investigate the idea itself as it has been understood from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the role that the concept has played in Jewish self-definition, how it has influenced the political, social, and cultural history of the Jews and of others, and whether discussion of the notion still has relevance in the world today. The book offers a broad spectrum of academic opinion: from tempered advocacy to reasoned disavowal, with many variations on the theme in between. It attempts to illustrate the centrality of the question in modern Jewish culture in general, and its importance for modern Jewish studies in particular. Part I addresses the idea itself and considers its ramifications. Richard I. Cohen focuses on the nexus between notions of 'Jewish contribution' and those of 'Jewish superiority'' David N. Myers shifts the focus from 'contribution' to 'civilization', arguing that the latter term often served the interests of Jewish intellectuals far better, and Moshe Rosman shows how the current emphasis on multiculturalism has given the idea of a 'Jewish contribution' new life. Part II turns to the relationship between Judaism and other monotheistic cultures. Elliott Horowitz's essay on the sabbath serves as an instructive test-case for the dynamic and complexity of the 'contribution' debate and a pointer to more general, theoretical issues. David Berger expands on these in his account of how discussion of Christianity's Jewish legacy developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Susannah Heschel shows how the Jewish-Christian encounter has influenced the study of other non-Western 'others'. Daniel Schroeter raises revealing questions about the altogether Eurocentric character of the 'contribution' discourse, which also bore heavily on perceptions of Jews and Judaism in the world of Islam. Part III introduces us to various applications and consequences of the debate. Yaacov Shavit probes the delicate balance forged by nineteenth-century German Jewish intellectuals in defining their identity. Mark Gelber moves the focus to the present and considers the post-war renewal of German Jewish culture and the birth of German-Jewish studies in the context of the 'contribution' discourse. Bringing the volume to its conclusion, David Biale compares three overviews of Jewish culture and civilization published in America in the twentieth and twenty-first-centuries.

Judaism and Science canvases three millennia of Jewish attitudes towards nature and its study. It answers many questions about the complex relationship of religion and science. How did religious attitudes and dogmas affect Jewish attitudes towards natural knowledge? How was Jewish interest in science reflected, and was facilitated by, links with other cultures - Egypt and Assyria and Babylon in ancient times, Moslem culture in medieval times, and Christian culture during the Renaissance and since? How did science serve as a bridge between religious communities that were otherwise estranged and embattled? How did science serve as a vehicle of assimilation into the wider intellectual culture in which Jews found themselves? The book considers the attitudes and work of particular Jews in different epochs. It takes an "eagle's-eye view" of its subject, considering broad themes from a high vantage, but also swooping down to consider particular individuals at high focus, and in detail. Judaism and Science encompasses the entire history of the interaction of Jews and natural knowledge. BLPart I: The Sages of Israel and Natural Wisdom describes the images of nature and natural philosophy in the two most important sets of books on the Jewish bookshelf: the Biblical corpus and the Talmudic/Early Rabbinic corpus Part II: Jews and Natural Philosophy shows how Jews explained nature, especially the nature of the heavens, or astronomy and astrology, in medieval times and early modern times. BLPart III: Jews and Science -- describes the entry of Jews into modern science, beginning in 19th century Europe and 20th century United States, USSR and Israel, emphasizing the social background of the rapid entryof Jews into modern sciences, and of their remarkable successes. BLThe volume includes annotated primary source documents, a timeline of important events, and an bibliography of essential primary and secondary sources for further research..

An in-depth analysis of an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, from its origins in the 20th century to its resurgence today The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia around 1905, claimed to be the captured secret protocols from the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 describing a plan by the Jewish people to achieve global domination. While the document has been proven to be fake, much of it plagiarized from satirical anti-Semitic texts, it had a major impact throughout Europe during the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. After World War II, the text was further denounced. Anyone who referred to it as a genuine document was seen as an ignorant hate-monger. Yet there is abundant evidence that The Protocols is resurfacing in many places. The Paranoid Apocalypse re-examines the text's popularity, investigating why it has persisted, as well as larger questions about the success of conspiracy theories even in the face of claims that they are blatantly counterfactual and irrational. It considers the medieval pre-history of The Protocols, the conditions of its success in the era of early twentieth-century secular modernity, and its post-Holocaust avatars, from the Muslim world to Walmart and Left-wing anti-American radicalism. Contributors argue that the key to The Protocols' longevity is an apocalyptic paranoia that lays the groundwork not only for the myth's popularity, but for its implementation as a vehicle for genocide and other brutal acts.

In this book, Marie Sabin argues that Mark's gospel represents an early and evolving Christianity, which shaped its theological discourse out of the forms familiar to early Judaism. In that early Jewish context, she says, theology took the form of connecting scripture with current events: the biblical word was continually reopened - i.e. reinterpreted - so as to reveal its relevance to the present faith-community. At the time, the chief genre for this hermeneutical process was the synagogue homily. Sabin contends that Mark's composition represented an interweaving of homilies preached by Jesus and his followers in the local synagogues. Sabin sees Mark not as a mere collector or scribe, however, but as an original theologian shaping his material in the context of two theological traditions: the Jewish wisdom traditions and Jewish Creation theology. Reading Mark in the contexts of these traditions reveals fresh meanings that break open Christian formulas long frozen in time and illuminate the Gospel's striking relevance to our own time.

Abraham Abulafia (1240 - c. 1291) founded an enormously influential branch of Jewish mysticism, referred to as the prophetic or ecstatic kabbalah. This book, from several perspectives, explores the impact of Christianity upon Abulafia. His copious writings evince an intense fascination with Christian themes, yet Abulafia's frequent diatribes against Jesus and Christianity reveal him to be deeply conflicted in his relationship to his southern European religious neighbors. This book undertakes a careful study of Abulafia's writings, suggesting that the recognition of an inner dynamic of attraction and revulsion toward the forbidden other provides a crucial key to understanding Abulafia's mystical hermeneutic and his meditative practice. It also demonstrates that Abulafia's uneasy relationship to Christianity shaped the very core of his mystical doctrine.

Modern English and Hebrew names with an analysis of their meanings and origins.

Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East provides a window for readers of English around the world into hitherto almost inaccessible halakhic and ideational writings expressing major aspects of the cultural intellectual creativity of Sephardic-Oriental rabbis in modern times. The text has three sections: Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, and each section discusses a range of original sources that reflect and represent the creativity of major rabbinic figures in these countries. The contents of the writings of these Sephardic rabbis challenge many commonly held views regarding Judaism's responses to modern challenges. By bringing an additional, non-Western voice into the intellectual arena, this book enriches the field of contemporary discussions regarding the present and future of Judaism. In addition, it focuses attention on the fact that not only was Judaism a Middle Eastern phenomenon for most of its existence but that also in recent centuries important and interesting aspects of Judaism developed in the Middle East. Both Jews and non-Jews will be enriched and challenged by this non-Eurocentric view of modern Judaic creativity.

Is theology possible after the Shoah? Marvin Sweeney challenges biblical theologians to take that question with utmost seriousness. Sweeney examines often ignored biblical texts where ancient Israel contemplated the problem of apparent divine absence and "divine evil," and finds the perspective of post-Holocaust theology an indispensable interpretive resource. In biblical stories like those of Abraham, Moses, Jeroboam, Manasseh, Josiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Esther, Job, and more, Sweeney finds the recognition "that human beings cannot always depend upon God to act to ensure righteousness in the world." The insistence, common among Holocaust theologians, that human beings must assume their own responsibility for doing justice and righteousness in the world is, Sweeney argues, powerfully present already in the Bible itself. This book is an important contribution to modern biblical theology and to Holocaust theology as well.

This book provides an edited text, introduction, and the first English translation of a central document in the history of religious coercion in late antiquity: Severus of Minorca's Letter on the Conversion of the Jews. The Letter describes the forced conversion of the Jews of Minorca to Christianity in AD 418, allegedly under the influence of St. Stephen's relics. Although ostensibly a hagiographical work, the Letter is fundamentally an anti-Jewish document, and therein lies its interest for historians. It offers a fascinating perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in a Mediterranean town, and on the motives for religious intolerance in the unsettled age of the Germanic invasions. In addition, its wealth of information about a diaspora Jewish community in the Western empire makes it unique among the surviving sources.

The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions includes authoritative yet accessible studies on a wide variety of topics dealing comparatively with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as with the interactions between the adherents of these religions throughout history. The comparative study of the Abrahamic Religions has been undertaken for many centuries. More often than not, these studies reflected a polemical rather than an ecumenical approach to the topic. Since the nineteenth century, the comparative study of the Abrahamic Religions has not been pursued either intensively or systematically, and it is only recently that the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has received more serious attention. This volume contributes to the emergence and development of the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions, a discipline which is now in its formative stages. This Handbook includes both critical and supportive perspectives on the very concept of the Abrahamic religions and discussions on the role of the figure of Abraham in these religions. It features 32 essays, by the foremost scholars in the field, on the historical interactions between Abrahamic communities; on Holy Scriptures and their interpretation; on conceptions of religious history; on various topics and strands of religious thought, such as monotheism and mysticism; on rituals of prayer, purity, and sainthood, on love in the three religions and on fundamentalism. The volume concludes with three epilogues written by three influential figures in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, to provide a broader perspective on the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions. This ground-breaking work introduces readers to the challenges and rewards of studying these three religions together.

Converso and Morisco are the terms applied to those Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity in large numbers and usually under duress in late Medieval Spain. The Converso and Morisco Studies publications will examine the implications of these mass conversions for the converts themselves, for their heirs (also referred to as Conversos and Moriscos) and for Medieval and Modern Spanish culture. As the essays in this collection attest, the study of the Converso and Morisco phenomena is not only important for those scholars focused on Spanish society and culture, but for academics everywhere interested in the issues of identity, Otherness, nationalism, religious intolerance and the challenges of modernity. Contributors include Mercedes Alcala-Galan, Ruth Fine, Kevin Ingram, Yosef Kaplan, Sara T. Nalle, Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano, Miguel Rodrigues Lourenco, Ashar Salah, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Claude Stuczynski, and Gerard Wiegers.

One of the most vexing problems facing medieval Jewish interpreters of the Hebrew Bible was how to implement the new interpretive strategy of extracting the straightforward, contextual meaning of biblical verses (peshat), without neglecting revered ancient rabbinic modes of interpretation (derash), which tended to be more fanciful and homiletical. This book investigates the interpretive style of Radak (R. David Kimhi, c. 1160-1232), one of the most preeminent Jewish exegetes, who masterfully utilized both approaches simultaneously. Analyzing his idiosyncratic consistent juxtaposition of peshat and derash-type rabbinic comments, and thoroughly parsing his methodological statements, the book demonstrates how at times he finds rabbinic traditions essential to resolving textual questions that arise in exegesis, while at other times, he affords them only ancillary functions in his commentaries. Naomi Grunhaus also considers in depth Radak's criteria when challenging rabbinic teachings, whether in narrative or legal contexts, which leads to the conclusion that most often he rejects rabbinic traditions when they appear to contradict textual biblical evidence, but occasionally also on the grounds of implausibility. Particularly noteworthy is the author's discussion of Radak's apparent challenges to rabbinic legal interpretations of Scriptures, an approach which most other exegetes hesitated to take. The book considers the anomaly that Radak regularly quotes rabbinic traditions and relies on traditional authority, while simultaneously challenging this same authority when rejecting certain rabbinic interpretations.