The present edition and translation of the rabbinic work Pesiqta Rabbati is a critical Hebrew edition, including a modern English translation on facing pages. Pesiqta Rabbati contains rabbinic homilies for Jewish holy days and special Sabbaths.

This volume contributes to the growing interest in understanding the phenomenon of prayer and praying in the Hebrew Bible, Early Judaism, and nascent Christianity. Papers by the leading scholars in these fields revisit long-standing questions and chart new paths of inquiry into the nature, form, and practice of addressing the divine in the ancient world. The essays in this volume deal with particular texts of and about prayer, practices of prayer, as well as figures and locations (historical and literary) that are associated with prayer and praying. These studies apply a range of methods and theoretical approaches to prayer and the language of prayer in literatures of Early Judaism and Christianity. Some studies apply the classical methods of biblical studies to Second Temple texts of prayer, including form critical and text critical approaches; others engage in literary and narrative analysis of ancient works that recount discourse directed to the divine. Still other studies draw on anthropological and sociological analyses of prayer or marshal particular theories of discourse, ethics, and moral agency to offer fresh interpretations of address to God in the literature of Second Temple Judaism and earliest Christianity.

Hair, Headwear, and Orthodox Jewish Women comments on hair covering based on an ethnographic study of the lives of Orthodox Jewish women in a small non-metropolitan synagogue. It brings the often overlooked stories of these women to the forefront and probes questions as to how their location in a small community affects their behavioral choices, particularly regarding the folk practice of hair covering. A kallah, or bride, makes the decision as to whether or not she will cover her hair after marriage. In doing so, she externally announces her religious affiliation, in particular her commitment to maintaining an Orthodox Jewish home. Hair covering practices are also unique to women's traditions and point out the importance of examining the women, especially because their cultural roles may be marginalized in studies as a result of their lack of a central role in worship. This study questions their contribution to Orthodoxy as well as their concept of Jewish identity and the ways in which they negotiate this identity with ritualized and traditional behavior, ultimately bringing into question the meaning of tradition in a modern world.

Human leadership is a multifaceted topic in the Hebrew Bible from a synchronic as well as diachronic perspective. A large range of distributions emerges from the successive sharpening or modification of different aspects of leadership. While some of them are combined to a complex figuration of leadership, others remain reserved for certain individuals. Furthermore, it can be considered a consensus within scholarly debate, that concepts of leadership have a certain connection to the history of ancient Israel which is, though, hard to ascertain. Following a previous volume that focused on the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets (BZAW 507), this volume deals with different concepts of leadership in selected Prophetic (Hag/Zech; Jer) and Chronistic literature Ezr/Neh; Chr). They are examined in a literary, (religious-/tradition-) historical and theological perspective. Special emphasis is given to phenomena of transforming authority and leadership claims in exilic/post-exilic times. Hence, the volume contributes to biblical theology and sheds new light on the redaction/reception history of the texts. Not least, it provides valuable insights into the history of religious and/or political "authorities" in Israel and Early Judaism(s).

"This is a timely contribution to some of the most pressing debates facing scholars of Jewish Studies today. It forces us to re-think standard approaches to both antisemitism and liberalism. Its geographic scope offers a model for how scholars can "provincialize" Europe and engage in a transnational approach to Jewish history. The book crackles with intellectual energy; it is truly a pleasure to read."- Jessica M. Marglin, University of Southern California, USA Green and Levis Sullam have assembled a collection of original, and provocative essays that, in illuminating the historic relationship between Jews and liberalism, transform our understanding of liberalism itself. - Derek Penslar, Harvard University, USA "This book offers a strikingly new account of Liberalism's relationship to Jews. Previous scholarship stressed that Liberalism had to overcome its abivalence in order to achieve a principled stand on granting Jews rights and equality. This volume asserts, through multiple examples, that Liberalism excluded many groups, including Jews, so that the exclusion of Jews was indeed integral to Liberalism and constitutive for it. This is an important volume, with a challenging argument for the present moment."- David Sorkin, Yale University, USA The emancipatory promise of liberalism - and its exclusionary qualities - shaped the fate of Jews in many parts of the world during the age of empire. Yet historians have mostly understood the relationship between Jews, liberalism and antisemitism as a European story, defined by the collapse of liberalism and the Holocaust. This volume challenges that perspective by taking a global approach. It takes account of recent historical work that explores issues of race, discrimination and hybrid identities in colonial and postcolonial settings, but which has done so without taking much account of Jews. Individual essays explore how liberalism, citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, race functioned differently in European Jewish heartlands, in the Mediterranean peripheries of Spain and the Ottoman empire, and in the North American Atlantic world.

This book addresses the educational, occupational, and income progress of Jews in the American labor market. Using theoretical and statistical findings, it compares the experience of American Jews with that of other Americans, from the middle of the 19th century through the 20th and into the early 21st century. Jews in the United States have been remarkably successful; from peddlers and low-skilled factory workers, clearly near the bottom of the economic ladder, they have, as a community, risen to the top of the economic ladder. The papers included in this volume, all authored or co-authored by Barry Chiswick, address such issues as the English language proficiency, occupational attainment and earnings of Jews, educational and labor market discrimination against Jews, life cycle and labor force participation patterns of Jewish women, and historical and methodological issues, among many others. The final chapter analyzes alternative explanations for the consistently high level of educational and economic achievement of American Jewry over the past century and a half. The chapters in this book also develop and demonstrate the usefulness of alternative techniques for identifying Jews in US Census and survey data where neither religion nor Jewish ethnicity is explicitly identified. This methodology is also applicable to the study of other minority groups in the US and in other countries.

As the pioneering work in its field, Jewish Serials of the World brings together a diverse body of literature essential to the study of the Jewish press from 1674 to the present. It identifies pertinent primary source materials and provides comprehensive coverage of the secondary literature in a field where no bibliographical control has ever existed. Arranged for the most part geographically, the citations include descriptions of significant publications of books, pamphlets, theses and articles, as well as jubilee issues of Jewish newspapers and magazines. In addition to internal cross-references, the work also contains subject and author indexes.

This bibliography documents and annotates the various articles and books devoted to Jewish ethics. It is divided into two sections. The first is an essay exploring philosophical questions and the way in which Jewish thinkers wrestle with them. The second part is an annotated bibliography with author, subject, and title indexes that brings together widely scattered or relatively unknown works. Representing the broad spectrum of Jewish thought, it includes articles from journals published by Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jewish institutions, scholarly articles and books published in the United States and Europe, traditional collections of Hebrew ethical writings, both contemporary and classical, and anthologies. The bibliographical survey is divided into five major sections: general works and anthologies, the history of Jewish ethics, issues in Jewish ethics, themes in Jewish ethics, and Jewish ethics and non-Jewish ethical theories.

'Content analysis'-which is a computer-assisted form of textual analysis-is used to examine divine activity in six prophetic texts, comparing God's activity to that of humans. In this methodologically innovative study, the author concludes, in the light of quantitative data, that God is harsher to non-Israelites than to Israelites in all the texts, and much kinder to Israelites in Joel than in the typical prophet. God and humans are involved in much the same kinds of physical and mental processes, but to considerably different degrees. Griffin argues persuasively that the God of the prophets is not the 'wholly other' of some theologies, but neither do his actions follow exactly the human pattern.

Is faith belief in something without proof? And if so is there never to be any proof or discovery? If so what is the need of intellect? If faith is trust in something that is real is that reality historical, literal or metaphorical or philosophical? If knowledge is an essential element in faith why should there by so much emphasis on believing and not on understanding in the modern practice of religion? This volume is a compilation of essays related to the nature of religious faith in the context of its inception in human history as well as its meaning for religious practice and relations between religions in modern times. Faith has come to be regarded as a virtuous goal in life. However, many people have asked how can it be that an endeavor that is supposed to be dedicated to spiritual upliftment has led to more conflict in human history than any other social factor? Faith-based religion has emerged in modern times as a powerful and dynamic form of social process that affects every human being as well as life in general, the animals, plants and the earth's elements. It relates to the survival of cultures as well as the survival of life itself. Thus it is important to understand what faith is and how it operates in the mind and the process that has ensued to form the world we see today. Therefore, this volume is dedicated to the exploration of history, politics, theology and philosophy in order to comprehend and effectively realize the effects of faith and discover the means to purify faith so as to direct ourselves towards harmony, peace and prosperity for all humanity.

"Re-Biographing and Deviance" examines the Jewish Midrashic model for self-renewal through time. In this important new study, author Rotenberg questions how traditional Judaism, with its contradictory notions of teshuvah (repentance) and of remembrance of the past, allows for the contemporary Jew to maintain a healthy cognitive dialogue between past failures and future aspirations. The author illustrates how the Midrashic narrative philosophy entails a psychotherapeutic system for reinterpretation of past sins into positive future-oriented biographies--which in turn provide fuel for Jewish vitality and its continuity between past, present and future.

The volume reflects the recent debate on intermarriage and its implications for group identity in the formative phase of Judaism. Intermarriage and group identity in the Second Temple Period will be investigated from different points of view with regard to methodology and analyzed texts. With an introduction to the history of research and a summarizing final section, the individual contributions will be associated with the larger context of the recent debate. Thus not only the diversity of texts on mixed marriage within the Hebrew Bible and related scripture will be shown and emphasized but the question of continuity and discontinuity as well as the socio-historical background of marriage restrictions will be dealt with, too. Covering a wide range of texts from almost every part of the "Hebrew Bible" as well as from "Elephantine", "Qumran" and several pseudepigrapha, like "Jubilees", its focus is on possible counter texts with a more positive notion of foreign wives, in addition to restrictive and prohibitive texts. These different approaches will illuminate the dynamics of the construction of group identity, culminating in conflicts concerning separation and integration which can be found in the debate on the topic of the "correct" marriage. Over the last 30 years this pioneering series has established an unrivaled reputation for cutting-edge international scholarship in Biblical Studies and has attracted leading authors and editors in the field. The series takes many original and creative approaches to its subjects, including innovative work from historical and theological perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and more recent developments in cultural studies and reception history.

This is the fifth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.macdiv.ca/jgrchj) since 2000. Volume 1 was for 2000, Volume 2 was for 2001-2005, Volume 3 was for 2006, Volume 4 was for 2007 and Volume 5 is for 2008. As they appear, the hardcopy editions will replace the online materials.The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Graeco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism.The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the 'larger picture' of politics, culture, religion and language,engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.

Zionism and the State of Israel provides a topical and controversial analysis of the development of Zionism and the recent history and politics of Israel.
This thought-provoking study examines the ways in which the Bible has been used to legitimize the implementation of the ideological and political programme of Zionism, and the consequences this has had.

This is the eighth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.jgrchj.net) since 2000. Volume 1 was for 2000, Volume 2 was for 2001-2005, Volume 3 was for 2006, Volume 4 was for 2007, Volume 5 was for 2008, Volume 6 was for 2009, Volume 7 was for 2010 and Volume 8 is for 2011-2012. As they appear, the hardcopy editions will replace the online materials. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Graeco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism. The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the 'larger picture' of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.

This book explores Queen Esther as an idealized woman in Iberia, as well as a Jewish heroine for conversos in the Sephardic Diaspora in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The biblical Esther --the Jewish woman who marries the King of Persia and saves her people -- was contested in the cultures of early modern Europe, authored as a symbol of conformity as well as resistance. At once a queen and minority figure under threat, for a changing Iberian and broader European landscape, Esther was compelling and relatable precisely because of her hybridity. She was an early modern globetrotter and border transgressor. Emily Colbert Cairns analyzes the many retellings of the biblical heroine that were composed in a turbulent early modern Europe. These narratives reveal national undercurrents where religious identity was transitional and fluid, thus problematizing the fixed notion of national identity within a particular geographic location. This volume instead proposes a model of a Sephardic nationality that existed beyond geographical borders.