A new translation of, and commentary on, the Book of Koheles (Ecclesiastes). By means of a free, but accurate, translation, Dr. Eichhorn breathes new life into this difficult-to-understand (and often misunderstood) book of the Bible.

Volume 15 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-14 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains six articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual analysis, as well as a survey of recent literature and a chronicle of cases of interest. Among the topics covered are: lying in rabbinical court proceedings; unjust enrichment; can a witness serve as judge in the same case?; Caro's Shulham Arukh v. Maimonides' Mishne Torah in the Yemenite community, the New Jersey eruv wards.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This volume examines the development of the non-liturgical parts of the Central Conference of American Rabbis' Haggadot. Through an understanding of the changes in American Jewish educational patterns and the CCAR's theology, it explores how the CCAR Haggadah was changed over time to address the needs of the constituency. While there have been many studies of the Haggadah and its development over the course of Jewish history, there has been no such study of the non-liturgical parts of the Haggadah that reflect the needs of the audience it reaches. How the CCAR, the first and largest of American-born Judaisms, addressed the changing needs of its members through its literature for the Passover Seder reveals much about the development of the movement. This in turn provides for the readers of this book an understanding of how American Judaism has developed.

The stories of Elisha the prophet have received scant attention in recent years, perhaps because they are so enigmatic. This study places the Elisha material firmly within the narrative of Genesis-2 Kings, and examines the effect these stories have on the reader's perception of the role of the 'prophet'. Using the narratological theories of Mieke Bal, David Jobling and others, Bergen shows that the Elisha stories present prophetism in a negative light, confining prophets to a rather limited scope of action in the narrative world.>

This, the first volume of a five-volume edition of the third order of the Jerusalem Talmud, deals with Jewish marital law and related topics. The volume is concerned with levirate marriage, considering other Jewish sects at the same time, with forbidden marriages and the judicial treatment of missing husbands, with the incapability to marry, and with the status of married juveniles.The publication of one volume per year is planned. Key feature A- Continuation of the well-received English-Aramaic edition

This volume: Combines the development of German philosophy from the Enlightenment to Idealism, and from Idealism to the revolutionary turning-point of the mid-nineteenth century with the Jewish question;Shows the close entwining of anti-Jewish prejudices with awareness of the importance of Judaism in the formation of modern thought;Points out the hopes, obstacles, compromises, and disappointments of Jewish emancipation right up to the appearance of racial anti-Semitism;Traces the changes in the debate over Judaism from the theological perspective to the philosophical and from the philosophical to that of the economic and naturalistic;Underlines the dangers to toleration that arise from seeing human history as directed towards a single aim."

Jessica M. Keady uses insights from social science and gender theory to shed light on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the community at Qumran. Through her analysis Keady shows that it was not only women who could be viewed as an impure problem, but also that men shared these characteristics as well. The first framework adopted by Keady is masculinity studies, specifically Raewyn Connell's hegemonic masculinity, which Keady applies to the Rule of the Community (in its 1QS form) and the War Scroll (in its 1QM form), to demonstrate the vulnerable and uncontrollable aspects of ordinary male impurities. Secondly, the embodied and empowered aspects of impure women are revealed through an application of embodiment theories to selected passages from 4QD (4Q266 and 4Q272) and 4QTohorot A (4Q274). Thirdly, sociological insights from Susie Scott's understanding of the everyday - through the mundane, the routine and the breaking of rules - reveal how impurity disrupts the constructions of daily life. Keady applies Scott's three conceptual features for understanding the everyday to the Temple Scroll (11QTa) and the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa) to demonstrate the changing dynamics between ordinary impure males and impure females. Underlying each of these three points is the premise that gender and purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls communities are performative, dynamic and constantly changing.

Marla Morris explores Jewish intellectuals in society and in the university using psychoanalytic theory. Morris examines Otherness as experienced by Jewish intellectuals who grapple with anti-Semitism within the halls of academia. She claims that academia breeds uncertainty and chaos.

This study explores the interplay between the commendation of enjoyment and the injunction to fear God in Ecclesiastes. Previous studies have tended to examine these seemingly antithetical themes in isolation from one another. Seeing enjoyment and fear to be positively correlated, however, enables a fresh articulation of the booka (TM)s theology. Enjoyment of life lies at the heart of Qoheleta (TM)s vision of piety, which may be characterized as faithful realism, calling for an authentic engagement with both the tragic and joyous dimensions of human existence. Winner of the 2007 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise

Ezra-Nehemiah has been neglected in biblical studies, but it is important as one of the few windows into the Persian period of Israel's history, the setting for so much of the final shape of the Hebrew Bible. To know this period is to know what influenced these redactors. In "Ezra and Nehemiah" Gordon Davies provides that knowledge using rhetorical criticism, a methodology that reveals the full range and progress of the book's ideas without hiding its rough seams and untidy edges.

The purpose of rhetorical criticism is to explain not the source but the power of the text as a unitary message. This approach does not look at plot development, characterization, or other elements whose roughness makes Ezra-Nehemiah frustrating to read. Instead, it examines the three parts of the relationship - the strategies, the situations, and the effects - between the speaker and the audience. Rhetorical criticism's scrutiny of the audience in context favors the search for the ideas and structures that are indigenous to the culture of the text.

Rhetorical criticism is interested in figures of speech as means of persuasion. Therefore, to apply it to Ezra-Nehemiah, Davies concentrates on the public discourse - the orations, letters, and prayers - throughout its text. In each chapter he follows a procedure that: (1) where it is unclear, identifies the rhetorical unit in which the discourse is set; (2) identifies the audiences of the discourse and the rhetorical situation; (3) studies the arrangement of the material; (4) studies the effect on the various audiences; (5) reviews the passage as a whole and judges its success. In the conclusion, Davies explains that Ezra-Nehemiah makes theological sense on its own terms, by forming a single work in which a range of ideas is argued.

Biblical scholars as well as those interested in literary criticism, communication studies, rhetorical studies, ecclesiology, and homiletics will find Ezra and Nehemiah enlightening.

Chapters are Ezra 1:1-6," "Ezra 4:1-24," "Ezra 5:1-6: 15," "Ezra 7," "Ezra 9-10," "Nehemiah 1- 2," "Nehemiah 3-7," and "Nehemiah 8-10."

"Gordon F. Davies is associate professor of Old Testament and dean of students at St. Augustine's Seminary of Toronto.""

Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt's indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.

The Jewish people influenced Western civilization through their Bible and their religion. Basic to Judaism is the Sabbath. How did the Sabbath originate? How did it receive its name? Was it always observed from sundown to sundown?

An inspiring way to reclaim your integrity and renew your sense of moral purpose.

"Like water, teshuvah is both destructive and creative. It dissolves the person you were but simultaneously provides the moisture you need to grow anew. It erodes the hard edges of your willfulness but also refreshens your spirit. It can turn the tallest barriers of moral blindness into rubble while it also gently nourishes the hidden seeds of hope buried deep in your soul. Teshuvah, like water, has the power both to wash away past sin and to shower you with the blessing of a new future, if only you trust it and allow yourself to be carried along in its current." from Part VII

In this candid and comprehensive probe into the nature of moral transgression and spiritual healing, Dr. Louis E. Newman examines both the practical and philosophical dimensions of teshuvah, Judaism's core religious-moral teaching on repentance, and its value for us Jews and non-Jews alike today. He exposes the inner logic of teshuvah as well as the beliefs about God and humankind that make it possible. He also charts the path of teshuvah, revealing to us how we can free ourselves from the burden of our own transgressions by: Acknowledging our transgressions Confessing Feeling remorse Apologizing Making restitution Soul reckoning Avoiding sin when the next opportunity arises"

In this book the author thoroughly examines the pentateuchal elohistic source, its structural unity and its relationship to the yahwistic source. His conclusions differ considerably from the accepted paradigm in the following ways: 1) In contrast to current scholarly opinions, it is assumed that E is the first basic pentateuchal source and that it predates J. J functions as E's first supplementary redactor - much as F. M. Cross, among others, conceived of P's redaction of J. 2) The name "Elohim" is used exclusively by the elohistic source even after Exodus 3 while the verses in Exodus 3 revealing Yahweh's name can be shown to be later additions. 3) Instead of the fragmentary source described by scholars, this study demonstrates the literary unity of E.

In this book, Lenn E. Goodman writes about the commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself" from the standpoint of Judaism, a topic and perspective that have not often been joined before. Goodman addresses two big questions: What does that command ask of us? and what is its basis? Drawing extensively on Jewish sources, both biblical and rabbinic, he fleshes out the cultural context and historical shape taken on by this Levitical commandment. In so doing, he restores the richness of its material content to this core articulation of our moral obligations, which often threatens to sink into vacuity as a mere nostrum or rhetorical formula.
Goodman argues against the notion that we have this obligation simply because God demands it -- a position that too readily makes ethics seem arbitrary, relativistic, dogmatic, authoritarian, contingent or just unpalatable. Rather he proposes that we learn much about how we ought to think about God from what we know about morals. He shows that natural reasoning and appeals to scripture, tradition, and revelation reinforce one another in ethical deliberation. For Goodman, ethics and theology are not worlds apart connected only by a kind of narrow one-way passage; the two realms of discourse can and should inform each other.
Engaging the philosophers, including Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant, and assembling three-thousand years worth of Jewish textual masterpieces, Goodman skillfully weaves his Gifford Lectures, which he delivered in 2005, into an indispensable work.

Focusing on writers who approach the Bible as a source that is both instructive and dangerous, "Subverting Scriptures" seeks to provide an academic analysis of cultural biblical saturation at a time when measured voices are necessary to counterbalance politically motivated religious rhetoric. Using as its point of departure the current political landscape - where the Bible is drawn on freely and unabashedly without critical reflection to legitimate and justify all manner of agendas - the contributors in this collection engage the Bible in new, imaginative, and critical ways, in the hopes of creating a new space for dialogue.

The book brings together the essays on Second Temple Judaism by Moshe Weinfeld, one of the leading figures in comparative literature and the history of religion in ancient Near Eastern studies. This integrated collection centers on the religious debates within Second Temple Judaism between the sectarian Qumran community and the Pharisees. It examines topics such as liturgy, law, theology and ideology; issues that established Jewish religious forms for normative, Rabbinic Judaism. It also sets these debates in the broader context of texts and ideas from the Bible and ancient Near East texts on one hand and the New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism on the other. The book comprises four sections. The first, 'Prayer and Worship' analyzes constitutive ideas reflected in the definitive prayers of Qumran and Pharisaic liturgy. The second, 'The Qumran Scrolls' engages various legal and hermeneutic issues in the literature of the Qumran sect. Section three, 'Theology and Ideology' treats a group of foundational Jewish concepts from the historical point of view. The final section 'The New Testament' brings several basic concepts and conceptions of Judaism into New Testament context. This is volume 54 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).