The author of this unique volume, Dr. Ronald W. Pies is a psychiatrist with a long-standing inerest in Jewish thought. Readers will surely note Dr. Pies's efforts to connect the teachings found within Pirkei Avot with the larger fabric of psychology, philosophy, and literature. While Pirkei Avot is a unique and specific expression of Judaic values, it is nevertheless true that the world's great religions often resonate with the values found within them. In some instances, this may reflect a direct historical/cultural interaction; in other cases, it reflects what may be called "convergent evolution." In any case, as the author writes, "Many values articulated in the world's major faiths are seen to mirror those embraced in Pirkei Avot.

Discover the Talmud and its universal values for all people. While the Hebrew Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, it is the Talmud that provides many central values for living. The Talmud sets out specific guidelines and lyrical admonitions regarding many of life's ordinary events, and offers profound words of advice for life s most intractable dilemmas. This accessible introduction to the Talmud explores the essence of Judaism through reflections on the words of the rabbinic sages, from one of American Judaism s foremost teachers and writers, Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins. Dr. Elkins provides fresh insight into ancient aphorisms and shows you how they can be applied to your life today. Topics include: Kindness through Giving, Welcoming and Sharing; Human Relationships; Personal Values; Family Values; Teaching and Learning; and Life s Puzzles. Enlightening and inspiring, the values of the Talmud can be appreciated not just by Jews, but by anyone seeking a greater understanding of life and its mysteries."

This book examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining legal consideration among the rabbis of Late Antiquity, from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Based on close readings of rabbinic texts from Palestine and Babylonia, Ayelet Hoffmann Libson highlights a unique and surprising development in Talmudic jurisprudence, whereby legal decision-making incorporated personal and subjective information. She examines the central legal role accorded to individuals' knowledge of their bodies and mental states in areas of law as diverse as purity laws, family law and the laws of Sabbath. By focusing on subjectivity and self-reflection, the Babylonian rabbis transformed earlier legal practices in a way that cohered with the cultural concerns of other religious groups in Late Antiquity. They developed sophisticated ideas about the inner self and incorporated these notions into their distinctive discourse of law.

First Order: Zeraim / Tractate Peah and Demay is the second volume in the edition of the Jerusalem Talmud. It presents basic Jewish texts on the organization of private and public charity, and on the modalities of coexistence of the ritually observant and the non-observant. This part of the Jerusalem Talmud has almost no counterpart in the Babylonian Talmud. Its study is prerequisite for an understanding of the relevant rules of Jewish tradition.

After World War II, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) published works in English and German by eminent Israeli scholars, in this way introducing them to a wider audience in Europe and North America. The series he founded for that purpose, Studia Judaica, continues to offer a platform for scholarly studies and editions that cover all eras in the history of the Jewish religion.

This volume, the second of a five-volume edition of the third order of the Jerusalem Talmud, deals in part I (Sotah) with the ordeal of the wife suspected of adultery (Num 5) and the role of Hebrew in the Jewish ritual. Part II (Nedarim) is concerned with Korban and similar expressions, vows and their consequences, and vows of women (Num 30).

The ninth volume of this edition, translation, and commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud contains two Tractates. The first Tractate, "Documents", treats divorce law and principles of agency when written documents are required. Collateral topics are the rules for documents of manumission, those for sealed documents whose contents may be hidden from witnesses, the rules by which the divorced wife can collect the moneys due her, the requirement that both divorcer and divorcee be of sound mind, and the rules of conditional divorce. The second Tractate, "Nazirites", describes the Nasirean vow and is the main rabbinic source about the impurity of the dead. As in all volumes of this edition, a (Sephardic rabbinic) vocalized text is presented, with parallel texts used as source of variant readings. A new translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary explaining the rabbinic background of all statements and noting Talmudic and related parallels. Attention is drawn to the extensive Babylonization of the Gittin text compared to genizah texts.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widely read Hindu scriptures in the Western world. Taking the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the divine Krishna on the eve of battle, it is concerned with the most profound aspects of social and religious duty, and the relationship of human beings to God. In its eighteen short chapters it explores the spiritual struggle of the human soul and the search for both the true self and eternal life, culminating in an unparalleled vision of God the omnipotent.

Volume 12 in the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Tractates Sanhedrin and Makkot belong together as one tractate, covering procedural law for panels of arbitration, communal rabbinic courts (in bare outline) and an elaborate construction of hypothetical criminal courts supposedly independent of the king's administration. Tractate Horaiot, an elaboration of Lev. 4:1-26, defines the roles of High Priest, rabbinate, and prince in a Commonwealth strictly following biblical rules.

The Cross of Christ: Foundational Islamic Perspectives takes an in-depth look at all of the medieval Muslim scholars considered to have affirmed Jesus' crucifixion. Each chapter provides the important historical and intellectual context for the commentators. As well, critical new translations of key texts are provided, offering important access to vital documents and schools of thought. The author argues that, rather than affirming the historicity of the crucifixion, the Isma'ilis tend to assume its historicity, in order to advance important Isma'ili doctrines. The author also contends that the commentators who explored ways to affirm the crucifixion, nonetheless made extensive use of traditional substitution legends that deny the crucifixion. In order to orient the reader, the book starts by introducing the reader to the Jesus of the Qur'an. It then compares him to the Jesus of the New Testament and the Jesus of extra canonical literature. Upon this Qur'anic skeleton, the author layers a myriad of details found in seventeen works of classic Islamic literature, so that a truly unique, authentic and authoritative Jesus of Islam emerges.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

Despite considerable scholarly efforts for many years, the last two decades of the Kingdom of Israel are still beneath the veil of history. What was the status of the Kingdom after its annexation by Assyria in 732 BCE? Who conquered Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom? When did it happen? One of the primary reasons for this situation lies in the discrepancies found in the historical sources, namely the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian texts. Since biblical studies and Assyriology are two distinct disciplines, the gaps in the sources are not easy to bridge. Moreover, recent great progress in the archaeological research in the Southern Levant provides now crucial new data, independent of these textual sources. This volume, a collection of papers by leading scholars from different fields of research, aims to bring together, for the first time, all the available data and to discuss these conundrums from various perspectives in order to reach a better and deeper understanding of this crucial period, which possibly triggered in the following decades the birth of "new Israel" in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and eventually led to the formation of the Hebrew Bible and its underlying theology.