E. H. Selib believes the average American Jew doesn't know what being Jewish really means. He or she ceases religious education at thirteen, and this vacuum of adult education is reflected in the dissipation of the Jewish population. Any Jewish person whose education has suffered such neglect can use "Is American Judaism History?" to learn or relearn the aspirations of Judaism. Today's classic question is, "What is a Jew?" and this illuminating guide answers that question. Drawing from his education and involvement in Jewish affairs throughout his life, Selib explores fascinating topics, such as: Judaism fundamentals Judaism roots and history Circumcision The Star of David The Three Pillars The significance of dietary laws How the High Holiday services relate to Abraham Perhaps most important are the questions he raises about the future of Judaism. Selib hopes this book will provide a strong and positive appreciation of Judaism, and that, ultimately, an understanding of their religion will help stop the dispersal of the Jewish people, giving them the strength, will, and zeal to carry on.

This book explores Israeli Religious Zionism and US Christian Zionism by focusing on the Messianic and Millenarian drives at the basis of their political mobilization towards a 'Jewish colonization' of the occupied territories.

A Hebrew-English text, with both English and Hebrew on each page, read like an English text from left to right

Product information not available.

This volume clears away myths and deliberate falsehoods to reach the bedrock of truth about Western society's Judeo-Christian tradition. In The Final Superstition Joseph Daleiden examines the origins of Judaism, Catholicism, and the various Christian fundamentalist sects. He demonstrates that in every instance the proponents of new religions exploit the misery and ignorance of their followers to gain control over their lives, resulting in a ruthless despotism that vigoiously stamps out all dissent. Sound ethics and effective social doctrines must not be grounded in myth and falsehood. Written in a lively dialogue form, The Final Superstition offers a devastating counterattack against those religionists who have for too long dictated public policy, often with dire consequences. While many who have looked to religion for comfort will find its conclusion unsettling, open-minded readers of this book will discover powerful arguments for emancipation from ancient superstition and erroneous moral systems.

Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature is a new series in English dealing with early Jewish literature between the third century BC and the middle of the second century AD; it is scheduled to encompass a total of 58 volumes. The texts are intended to be interpreted as a textual unity against the background of their particular Jewish and historico-political contexts, with text-based, historical, literary and theological analyses being undertaken. The first volume, by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, is devoted to a commentary on the Book of Tobit (Tobias).

Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921), one of the founders of modern Arabic and Islamic studies, was a Hungarian Jew and a Professor at the University of Budapest. A wunderkind who mastered Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic as a teenager, his works reached international acclaim long before he was appointed professor in his native country. From his initial vision of Jewish religious modernization via the science of religion, his academic interests gradually shifted to Arabic-Islamic themes. Yet his early Jewish program remained encoded in his new scholarly pursuits. Islamic studies was a refuge for him from his grievances with the Jewish establishment; from local academic and social irritations he found comfort in his international network of colleagues. This intellectual and academic transformation is explored in the book in three dimensions – scholarship on religion, in religion (Judaism and Islam), and as religion – utilizing his diaries, correspondences and his little-known early Hungarian works.

In this meticulously researched and compelling study, David Sim reconstructs the social setting of the Matthean community at the time the Gospel was written and traces its full history.Dr Sim argues that the Matthean community should be located in Antioch towards the latter part of the first century. He acknowledges the dispute within the early Christian movement and its importance. He defines more accurately the distinctive perspectives of the two streams of thought and their respective relationships to Judaism. A new and important work in Matthean studies.>

In this ground-breaking book, based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin's regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky's principal Shoah poems.

Based on evidence taken from a wide range of source material, Christina Scham employs an innovative excl usive approach to the study of Jewish scribes and their role in the Second-Temple period. '

In Paul and Scripture, an international group of scholars discuss a range of topics related to the Apostle Paul and his relationship(s) with Jewish Scripture. The essays represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints, with some devoted to methodological issues, others to general patterns in Paul's uses of Scripture, and still others to specific letters or passages within the traditional Pauline canon (inclusive of the disputed letters). The end result is an overview of the various ways in which Paul the Apostle weaves into his writings the authority, content, and even wording of Jewish Scriptures.

These papers address the central question of how classical Christian images of Jews have been acted out or muted in interreligious encounters in the USA. The book is organized according to the salient issues that divide Jews from the Christian majority, with sections on anti-Semitism.

Gellman presents a new theology of the Jews as the Chosen People, addressing self-serving ethnocentric supremacy, cultural isolation, and defamation of religions other than Judaism. This book is traditional in taking chosenness and the truth of Judaism seriously, and in eschewing a theology of multiple covenants. At the same time, it is critical, rejecting previous concepts of chosenness, and innovative, offering for the twenty-first century a fresh way of seeing the Jews' place in the world. On this foundation, Gellman suggests a new approach to inter-religious understanding from a Jewish point of view, and examines the impact of his proposal on traditional Jewish liturgy.

For nearly four millennia Judaism was essentially a unified religious system based on shared traditions. Despite the emergence of various sub-groups through the centuries such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Karaites, Shabbateans and Hasadim, Jewry was united in the belief in a providential God who had chosen the Jews as his special people and given them a code of law. In the modern period, however, the Jewish religion has fragmented into a series of separate denominations with competing ideologies and theological views. Despite the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish people are deeply divided concerning the most fundamental issues of belief and practice. Judaism Today gives an account of the nature of traditional Judaism, provides an introduction to the various divisions that currently exist in the Jewish world and identifies and discusses contemporary issues with which the Jewish faith engages in the twenty-first century. This refreshing new approach focuses on how Judaism is actually perceived and practised by Jews themselves and the problems currently facing Jews worldwide.

The present volume provides a comparative look at the contents and layout features of secondary annotations in biblical manuscripts across linguistic traditions. Due to the privileged focus on the text in the columns, these annotations and the practices that produced them have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The vast richness of extant verbal and figurative notes accompanying the biblical texts in the intercolumns and margins of the manuscript pages have thus been largely overlooked. The case studies gathered in this volume explore Jewish and Christian biblical manuscripts through the lens of their annotations, addressing the various relationships between the primary layer of text and the secondary notes, and exploring the roles and functions of annotated manuscripts as cultural artifacts. By approaching biblical manuscripts as potential "notepads", the volume offers theoretical reflection and empirical analyses of the ways in which secondary notes may shed new light on the development and transmission of text traditions, the shifting engagement with biblical manuscripts over time, as well as the change of use and interpretation that may result from the addition of the notes themselves.