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The Divine Attributes" is an engaging analysis of the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the perspective of rational theology.

This ambitious study rationally explores the nature of God, differentiates the idea of God from other historical ideas of the divine, and identifies the core qualities of a maximally great, or perfect, being. It includes detailed discussions of the fundamental divine attributes, such as divine power, knowledge, and goodness. It also addresses whether God is to be understood as eternal, within or outside of time, existing necessarily or contingently, and whether God is to be understood as a physical or a spiritual substance.

The authors conclude that, properly understood, the concept of God is coherent, although certain attributes that some traditional theologians ascribe to God should be rejected.

Blending the deep traditions of Jewish humanism with modern philosophical expressions, this book argues that Jewish values are not fixed propositions embedded in written form that can be easily handed off from one generation to the next.

'Queen Sheba Talking': Finally Queen Sheba is found It is a fascinating investigation leading to the where about Queen Sheba is hiding? 3000 years of colourful history is revealed by Hisham Amili. Who was Queen Sheba and did King Solomon really exist? Indeed was Jerusalem built when Queen Sheba visited Solomon or did she visit him in Mecca instead? 'Queen Sheba talking' is revealing many secrets of the Near East Civilisations, Camels, Jews and Ethiopians? The book entertains the possibility that Queen Sheba and king Solomon were neither neighbours nor prominent, merely virtual leaders. On the other hand 'Queen Sheba Talking' provides great evidence to support their true existence but 150 years after their traditional biblical dates. Unlike Amili's previous books, there are many charts and tables in his new 'Queen Sheba talking' simplifying the tale and serving the feeds that led to her throne. It is a fascinating read with great imagination based on actual records of history and antiquities . Contrary to Napoleon, Alexandra, Cleopatra or even Hitler, the story of Queen Sheba has greater impact and more secrets to explore. It is a powerful true story of love, religion, civilisation, trade, gender and ultimate control on people and their aspiration.

After forty years of feminism, views of the traditional Jewish family, religion, and gender roles have changed. In the process a new literature has been created, new paradigms born, and many Jewish women writers have been reevaluated, reclaimed, and renamed, with their Jewish heritage often overlooked or misinterpreted." Modern Jewish Women Writers in America "includes groundbreaking essays and interviews with scholars and authors who reveal that despite pressures of assimilation, personal goals, and in some cases, anti-Semitism, they have never been able to divorce their lives or literature from being Jewish.

Carefully arguing that many common assumptions about the traditional Jewish family are mistaken, this outstanding collection of essays--many previously unpublished--by thirteen leading scholars, explores the subject both in its historical reality and as it has been perceived and imagined by Jews over the centuries. Writing for a conference held at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America the contributors, including Robert Alter, Mordecai Friedman, Paula Hyman, and Moshe Idel, reveal the Jewish family to be a variegated, rich, and complicated institution that has adapted and responded to the many different cultures in which Jews have made their homes. Individual essays examine Jewish marriage in rabbinic, medieval, and modern times; marriage as a literary and artistic metaphor; childhood and adolescence in Judaism and the role of the mother as ethical instructor; and the Jewish family in the community, where different Jewish cultures have preserved central elements of the tradition while developing unique expressions of family life.

It is crucial today to understand how religions can exist harmoniously in a shared environment, whether local or global. A reasoned approach to this question was sought by participants at a stimulating conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in a predominantly Muslim country, Indonesia. Themes treated include the relation between theoretical approaches and religious viewpoints, practical problems and conflict resolution at the local level, and religious education with special reference to the role of Muslim schools (pesantren) in Indonesia.

The book of Esther was a conscious reaction to much of the conventional wisdom of its day, challenging beliefs regarding the Jerusalem Temple, the land of Israel, Jewish law, and even God. Aaron Koller identifies Esther as primarily a political work, and shows that early reactions ranged from ignoring the book to 'rewriting' Esther in order to correct its perceived flaws. But few biblical books have been read in such different ways, and the vast quantity of Esther-interpretation in rabbinic literature indicates a conscious effort by the Rabbis to present Esther as a story of faith and traditionalism, and bring it into the fold of the grand biblical narrative. Koller situates Esther, and its many interpretations, within the intellectual and political contexts of Ancient Judaism, and discusses its controversial themes. His innovative line of enquiry will be of great interest to students and scholars of Bible and Jewish studies.

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.

Rabbi Safran's compelling book about the need to incorporate the traditional view of modesty if we are to save our children from the superficiality, the decadence and the damaging influences of our modern, "progressive" society, opens with a simple question, "What can an Orthodox rabbi tell me about my children or my life?"
In his book, Rabbi Dr. Safran goes on to make clear that an Orthodox rabbi has quite a bit to say about the modern world, the power of spirituality, and the particularly powerful religious worldview of Judaism. Rabbi Safran presents the traditional view of modesty in the context of Judaism's unique way of looking at the world. For Judaism, seeks an appropriate balance between the physical and the spiritual, denying neither and recognizing that the beauty of God's creative wisdom inhabits both.
Rabbi Safran presents the traditional Jewish view of modesty, tzniut, by first questioning the "benefit" that the modern world has bestowed upon us. Indeed, he takes the strong position that our modern world has sought to turn our children into "commodities" that serve to benefit a corporate bottom line, but not the best interests of our children.
The superficiality of the modern world, with its emphasis on body image, has done a profound disservice to us and to our children. There are ever more young people turning to illicit sexual encounters, alcohol and drug abuse, and who suffer from psychological struggles like eating disorders. In this context, Rabbi Safran does not present tzniut as a "quick fix." Far from it. He establishes the textual, spiritual and historical context for modesty and demonstrates with candor

Although in Second Temple literature we find a variety of songs concerned with the future of Jerusalem, little attempt has been made to analyse these comparatively as a generic group. In this study, three songs have been selected on the basis of their similarity in style, ideas and their apparent original composition in Hebrew. The texts have been subjected to a literary analysis both individually and then comparatively.

The volume publishes papers read at the tenth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2013. The authors explore various aspects of this literature, with pre-eminent emphasis on their relation to diverse early Jewish texts and traditions; their reactions on Hellenism; and the way they treated as a canonical collection within their history of interpretation.

The existence of ascetic elements within rabbinic Judaism has generally been either overlooked or actually denied. Diamond shows that rabbinic asceticism does indeed exist. This asceticism is mainly secondary, rather than primary, in that the rabbis place no value on self-denial in and of itself, but rather require of themselves the virtual abandonment of familial, social, and economic life in favour of an absolute commitment to the study of the Torah. It is an asceticism of neglect, rather than negation. He also notes that this asceticism of neglect dovetails with the rabbinic theology of sin and punishment, which encourages delaying gratification in this world in the hopes of a greater reward in the next.

Since the Enlightenment period, German-Jewish intellectuals have been prominent voices in the multi-facetted discourse on the reinterpretation of Jewish tradition in light of modern thinking. Paul Mendes-Flohr, one of the towering figures of current scholarship on German-Jewish intellectual history, has made invaluable contributions to a better understanding of the religious, cultural and political dimensions of these thinkers' encounter with German and European culture, including the tension between their loyalty to Judaism and the often competing claims of non-Jewish society and culture. This volume assembles essays by internationally acknowledged scholars in the field who intend to honor Mendes-Flohr's work by portraying the abundance of religious, philosophical, aesthetical and political aspects dominating the thinking of those famous thinkers populating German Jewry's rich and complex intellectual world in the modern period. It also provides a fresh theoretical outlook on trends in Jewish intellectual history, raising new questions concerning the dialectics of assimilation. In addition to that, the volume sheds light on thinkers and debates that hitherto have not been accorded full scholarly attention.

This volume will concentrate its search for religious individuality on texts and practices related to texts from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity. Texts offer opportunities to express one's own religious experience and shape one's own religious personality within the boundaries of what is acceptable. Inscriptions in public or at least easily accessible spaces might substantially differ in there range of expressions and topics from letters within a sectarian religious group (which, at the same time, might put enormous pressure on conformity among its members, regarded as deviant by a majority of contemporaries). Furthermore, texts might offer and advocate new practices in reading, meditating, remembering or repeating these very texts. Such practices might contribute to the development of religious individuality, experienced or expressed in factual isolation, responsibility, competition, and finally in philosophical or theological reflections about "personhood" or "self". The volume develops its topic in three sections, addressing personhood, representative and charismatic individuality, the interaction of individual and groups and practices of reading and writing. It explores Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin texts.

This book presents pedagogical strategies for today's diverse Israel Studies classrooms. It offers Israel-specific innovations for online teaching, tested methods for organizing global virtual exchanges that uplift marginalized voices in Israel, including Palestinian voices, and an intellectual and political overview of the field. Informed by the author's experiences in the classroom and principles shared with her by fellow instructors, the book provides a guide to developing an Israel Studies syllabus or integrating Israel Studies units into an existing curriculum

The papacy of Pius XII (1939-1958) has been a source of near-constant debate and criticism since his death over half a century ago. Powerful myths have arisen around him, and central to them is the dispute surrounding his alleged silence during the years of the Holocaust. In this groundbreaking work, historian Paul O'Shea examines the papacy as well as the little-studied pre-papal life of Eugenio Pacelli in order to illuminate his policies, actions, and statements during the war. Drawing carefully and comprehensively on the historical record, O'Shea convincingly demonstrates that Pius was neither an anti-Semitic villain nor a "lamb without stain." Ultimately, Pius's legacy reveals the moral crisis within many parts of the fractured Christian Commonwealth as well as the personal culpability of Pacelli, the man and pope.

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.

Opening with the prophet Elijah's ascent into heaven and closing with the people of Judah's descent to Babylonia, 2 Kings charts the story of the two Israelite kingdoms until their destruction. This commentary unfolds the literary dimensions of 2 Kings, analyzes the strategies through which its words create a world of meaning, and examines the book's tales of prophets, political intrigue, royal apostasy, and religious reform as components of larger patterns.

2 Kings pays attention to the writers' methods of representing human character and of twisting chronological time for literary purposes. It also shows how the contests between kings and prophets are mirrored in the competing structures of regnal synchronization and prophecy-fulfillment. Much more than a common chronicle of royal achievements and disasters, 2 Kings emerges as a powerful history that creates memories and forges identities for its Jewish readers.

"2 Kings" is divided into four parts including Part One The Story of Elisha: 2 Kings 1:1-8:6"; Part Two "Revolutions in Aram, Israel, and Judah: 2 Kings 8:7-13:25"; Part Three "Turmoil and Tragedy for Israel: 2 Kings 14-17"; and Part Four "Renewal and Catastrophe for Judah: 2 Kings 18-25."

"Robert L. Cohn is professor of religion and holds the Philip and Muriel Berman Chair in Jewish studies at Lafayette College. Under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee, he lectured on Jewish interpretations of the Bible as the first American Jewish-scholar-in-residence at four Roman Catholic seminaries in Poland.""

The scholarly study of the texts traditionally regarded as sacred in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been an important aspect of Wissenschaft des Judentums and was often conceptualized as part of Jewish theology. Featuring studies on Isaak Markus Jost's Jewish children's Bible, Samson Raphael Hirsch's complex position on the question whether or not the Hebrew Bible is to be understood within the context of the Ancient Orient, Isaac Mayer Wise's "The Origin of Christianity," Ignaz Goldziher's Scholarship on the Qur'an, modern translators of the Qur'an into Hebrew, and the German translation of the Talmud, the volume attempts to shed light on some aspects of this phenomenon, which as a whole seems to have received few scholarly attention, and to contextualize it within the contemporary intellectual currents.

This volume presents the theory of culture of the Russian-born German Jewish social philosopher David Koigen (1879-1933). Heir to Hermann Cohen's neo-Kantian interpretation of Judaism, he transforms the religion of reason into an ethical Intimitatsreligion. He draws upon a great variety of intellectual currents, among them, Max Scheler's philosophy of values, the historical sociology of Max Weber, the sociology of religion of Emile Durkheim, Ernst Troeltsch and Georg Simmel and American pragmatism. Influenced by his personal experience of marginality in German academia yet the same time unconstrained by the dictates of the German Jewish discourse, Koigen shapes these theoretical strands into an original argument which unfolds along two trajectories: theodicy of culture and ethos. Distinguished from ethics, ethos identifies the non-formal factors that foster a group's sense of collective identity as it adapts to continuous change. From a Jewish perspective, ethos is grounded in the biblical covenant as the paradigm of a social contract and corporate liability. Although the normative content of the covenantal ethos is subject to gradual secularization, its metaphysical and existential assumptions, Koigen argues, continue to inform Jewish self-understanding. The concept of ethos identifies the dialectic of tradition as it shapes Jewish religious consciousness, and, in turn, is shaped by the evolving cultural and axiological sensibilities. In consonance, Jewish identity cannot be reduced to ethnicity or a purely secular culture. Urban develops these fragmentary and inchoate theories into a sociology of religious knowledge and suggests to read Koigen not just as a Jewish sociologist but as the first sociologist of Judaism who proposes to overcome the dogmatic anti-metaphysical stance of European sociology.

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.