"The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" explores the social position of rabbis in Palestinian (Roman) and Babylonian (Persian) society from the period of the fall of the Temple to late antiquity. Author Richard Kalmin argues that ancient rabbinic sources depict comparable differences between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic relationships with non-Rabbis." The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" provides a cultured and stimulating analysis of the role of the sage in late antiquity and sheds new light on rabbinic comments on such diverse topics as biblical heroes and genealogy and lineage.

Priests in Exile is the first comprehensive scholarly opus in English to reconstruct the history of the mysterious Temple of Onias, a Jewish temple built by a Jerusalemite high priest in his Egyptian exile that functioned in parallel with the Temple of Jerusalem. Piotrkowski's book addresses a topic that is mysterious, important and anomalous: a Jewish community of mercenary priests in the (Egyptian) Diaspora in which the priestly sacrificial ritual was carried out daily over a period of more than two hundred years until the first century CE, outlasting the Jerusalem Temple by about three years. Although the book focuses on the very circumscribed topic of the parallel Temple it casts a wide net, placing the story in the context of Jewish Diaspora life in ancient times. Ancient topics and texts are brought to bear, including papyri, epigraphy, archaeology, as well as the modern literature. Piotrkowski throws new light on a fascinating episode of ancient Jewish history that is usually left in the dark.

An intimate and candid examination of the changing nature of belief and where it can lead us from the life experience of one of Judaism's leading thinkers.

For over five decades, Rabbi Neil Gillman has helped people think through the most challenging questions at the heart of being a believing religious person. In this intimate rethinking of his own theological journey he explores the changing nature of belief and the complexities of reconciling the intellectual, emotional and moral questions of his own searching mind and soul.If what we have in recognizing, speaking of and experiencing God is a wide-ranging treasury of humanly crafted metaphors, what, then, is the ultimate reality, the ultimate nature of God? What lies beyond the metaphors?If humanity was an active partner in revelation if the human community participated in what was revealed and gave it meaning what then should be the authority of Jewish law?How do we cope intellectually, emotionally and morally with suffering, the greatest challenge to our faith commitment, relationship with God and sense of a fundamentally ordered world?Death is inevitable but why is it built in as part of the total life experience?"

In separate multi-volumed works, form-analytical English translations of the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli have been set forth. Outlines of the Yerushalmi and the Bavli have been brought about, and those outlines of the two Talmuds have been compared. In addition, for each subject the main points of the Halakhah of the topical expositions or tractates of the Mishnah-Tosefta-Yerushalmi-Bavli have been set forth. The theological message of the respective tractates has been spelled out. Here, we follow a single tractate through the principal documents of formative Judaism as these have already presented them. How the academic commentaries, outlines and comparisons, and theological summaries yield a systematic account of the Halakhah in its documentary unfolding is thus fully exposed.

2006 National Jewish Book Award, Modern Jewish Thought

Long the object of curiosity, admiration, and gossip, rabbis' wives have rarely been viewed seriously as American Jewish religious and communal leaders. We know a great deal about the important role played by rabbis in building American Jewish life in this country, but not much about the role that their wives played. The Rabbi's Wife redresses that imbalance by highlighting the unique contributions of "rebbetzins" to the development of American Jewry.

Tracing the careers of "rebbetzins" from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present, Shuly Rubin Schwartz chronicles the evolution of the role from a few individual rabbis' wives who emerged as leaders to a cohort who worked together on behalf of American Judaism. The Rabbi's Wife reveals the ways these women succeeded in both building crucial leadership roles for themselves and becoming an important force in shaping Jewish life in America.

Jewish women of all ages and backgrounds come together in Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women to explore and rejoice in what they have in common--their heritage. They reveal in striking personal stories how their Jewishness has shaped their identities and informed their experiences in innumerable, meaningful ways. Survivors, witnesses, defenders, innovators, and healers, these women question, celebrate, and transmit Jewish and feminist values in hopes that they might bridge the differences among Jewish women. They invite both Jewish and non-Jewish readers to share in their discussions and stories that convey and celebrate the multiplicity of Jewish backgrounds, attitudes, and issues.In Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women, you will read about cultural, religious, and gender choices, conversion to Judaism, family patterns, Jewish immigrant experiences, the complexities of Jewish secular identities, antisemitism, sexism, and domestic violence in the Jewish community. As the pages unfold in this wonderful book of personal odysseys, the colorful patterns of Jewish women's lives are laid before you. You will find much cause for rejoicing, as the authors weave together their compelling and unique stories about: midlife Bat mitzvah preparations the transmission of Jewish values by Sephardi and Ashkenazi grandmothers traditional Sephardi customs the sorrow and healing involved in coping with the Holocaust a lesbian's fascination with Kafka the external and internal obstacles Jewish women encounter in their efforts to study Jewish topics and participate in Jewish ritual becoming a Reconstructionist rabbi the difficulties and benefits of being the teenaged daughter of a rabbiA harmonious chorus of individual voices, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women will delight and inspire Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike. It reminds each of us how diverse and distinctive Jewish women's lives are, as well as how united they can be under the wonderful fold of Judaism. This book will be of great interest to all women, as well as to rabbis, Jewish community leaders and professionals, mental health workers, and those in Jewish studies, women's studies, and multicultural studies.

Visionary solutions for a community ripe for transformational change from fourteen leading innovators of Jewish life.

"Jewish Megatrends offers a vision for a community that can simultaneously strengthen the institutions that serve those who seek greater Jewish identification and attract younger Jews, many of whom are currently outside the orbit of Jewish communal life. Schwarz and his collaborators provide an exciting path, building on proven examples, that we ignore at our peril." from the Foreword

The American Jewish community is riddled with doubts about the viability of the institutions that well served the Jewish community of the twentieth century. Synagogues, Federations and Jewish membership organizations have yet to figure out how to meet the changing interests and needs of the next generation.

In this challenging yet hopeful call for transformational change, visionary leader Rabbi Sidney Schwarz looks at the social norms that are shaping the habits and lifestyles of younger American Jews and why the next generation is so resistant to participate in the institutions of Jewish communal life as they currently exist. He sets out four guiding principles that can drive a renaissance in Jewish life and gives evidence of how, on the margins of the Jewish community, those principles are already generating enthusiasm and engagement from the very millennials that the organized Jewish community has yet to engage.

Contributors leading innovators from different sectors of the Jewish community each use Rabbi Schwarz's framework as a springboard to set forth their particular vision for the future of their sector of Jewish life and beyond.

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Hannah M Cotton's collected papers focus on questions which have fascinated her for over four decades: the concrete relationships between law, language, administration and everyday life in Judaea and Nabataea in particular, and in the Roman world as a whole. Many of the papers, especially those devoted to the Judean Desert documents of the 2nd century CE have been widely cited. Others, having appeared in less accessible publications, may not have received the attention they deserve. On the whole, rather than addressing the grand narratives of world or national history, they look at the texture of life, seeking to provide tentative answers to historical questions and interpretations by paying fine attention to the details of literary and, especially, documentary evidence. Taken together they illuminate fundamental, often legal, questions concerning daily life and the exercise of Roman rule and administration in the early imperial period, and especially, their impact on life as it was lived in the province and the period where Roman and Jewish history fatefully intersected. The volume includes a complete bibliography of her publications.

Entry Into the Inconceivable is an introduction to the philosophy of the Hua-yen school of Buddhism, one of the cornerstones of East Asian Buddhist thought. Cleary presents a survey of the unique Buddhist scripture on which the Hua-yen teaching is based and a brief history of its introduction into China. He also presents a succinct analysis of the essential metaphysics of Hua-yen Buddhism as it developed during China's golden age and full translations of four basic texts by seminal thinkers of the school.

Gavin D'Costa breaks new ground in this authoritative study of the Second Vatican Council's doctrines on other religions, with particular attention to Judaism and Islam. The focus is exclusively on the doctrinal foundations found in Lumen Gentium 16 that will serve Catholicism in the twenty first century. D'Costa provides a map outlining different hermeneutical approaches to the Council, whilst synthesising their strengths and providing a critique of their weaknesses. Moreover, he classifies the different authority attributed to doctrines thereby clarifying debates regarding continuity, discontinuity, and reform in doctrinal teaching. Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims expertly examines the Council's revolutionary teaching on Judaism which has been subject to conflicting readings, including the claim that the Council reversed doctrinal teachings in this area. Through a rigorous examination of the debates, the drafts, the official commentary, and with consideration of the previous Council and papal doctrinal teachings on the Jews, D'Costa lays bare the doctrinal achievements of the Council, and concludes with a similar detailed examination of Catholic doctrines on Islam. This innovative text makes essential interventions in the debate about Council hermeneutics and doctrinal teachings on the religions.

Holy War in Judaism is the first book to consider how the concept of ''holy war'' disappeared from Jewish thought for almost 2000 years, only to reemerge with renewed vigor in modern times. Holy war, sanctioned or even commanded by God, is a common and recurring theme in the Hebrew Bible, but Rabbinic Judaism largely avoided discussion of holy war in the Talmud and related literatures for the simple reason that it became extremely dangerous and self-destructive. The revival of the holy war idea occurred with the rise of Zionism, and as the need for organized Jewish engagement in military actions developed, Orthodox Jews faced a dilemma. There was great need for all to engage in combat for the survival of the infant state of Israel, but the Talmudic rabbis had virtually eliminated divine authorization for Jews to fight in Jewish armies. The first stage of the revival was sanction for Jews to fight in defense. The next stage emerged with the establishment of the state and allowed Orthodox Jews to enlist even when the community was not engaged in a war of survival. Once the notion of divinely sanctioned warring was revived, it became available to Jews who considered that the historical context justified more aggressive forms of warring. Among some Jews, divinely authorized war became associated not only with defense but also with a renewed kibbush or conquest, a term that became central to the discourse regarding war and peace and the lands conquered by the state of Israel in 1967. By the early 1980's, the rhetoric of holy war had entered the general political discourse of modern Israel. In this book Reuven Firestone identifies, analyzes, and explains the historical, conceptual, and intellectual processes that revived holy war ideas in modern Judaism. The book serves as a case study of the way in which one ancient religious concept, once deemed irrelevant or even dangerous, was successfully revived in order to fill a pressing contemporary need. It also helps to clarify the current political and religious situation in relation to war and peace in Israel and the Middle East.

The volume is a commentary on 1 Enoch chapters 91-108 that begins with the Ethiopic text tradition but also takes the Greek and Aramaic (Dead Sea Scrolls) evidence into account. This section of 1 Enoch, which contains material from at least five different documents composed some time during the 2nd century BCE, provides a window into the early stages of the reception of the earliest Enoch tradition, as it was being negotiated in relation to elitist religious opponents, on the one hand, and in relation to other Jewish traditions that were flourishing at the time. The commentary, at the beginning of which there is an extensive introduction, is structured in the following way: there is a translation for each unit of text (including the Greek and Aramaic where it exists, with the Greek and Ethiopic translations presented synoptically), followed by detailed textual notes that justify the translation and provide information on a full range of variations among the manuscripts. This, in turn, is followed by a General Comment on the unit of text; after this there are detailed notes on each subdivision of the text which attempt to situate the content within the stream of biblical interpretation and developing Jewish traditions of the Second Temple period. The five documents in 1 Enoch 91-108 are dealt with in the following order: (1) Apocalypse of Weeks (93:1-10; 91:11-17); (2) Admonition (91:1-10, 18-19); (3) Epistle of Enoch (92:1-5; 93:11-105:2; (4) Birth of Noah (106-107); and (5) the Eschatological Appendix (108).

How can finite minds approach an infinite and ultimately unknowable God? Is it true that Christianity is a religion of love and Judaism a religion of law? Can a Jew accept the Orthodox Christian veneration of holy images? How much do Jews and Orthodox Christians have in common when they worship God? What can be done about Christian prayers that Jews find offensive? How much responsibility do Christians carry for antisemitism? These and other questions are addressed in this book which is intended as a major contribution to encounters between Judaism and Orthodox Christianity. In seventeen chapters, expert theologians and historians examine central issues of common concern relating to theology and worship as well as to the vexed historical question of anti-Semitism. The focus is on dialogue and deepened knowledge, as the contributors s dispel widely-held misconceptions and identify a good deal of common ground.

Employs the social-psychological study of social rejection, social identity theory, and social memory theory, shedding new light on the topic.

Throughout the nineteenth century the entire structure of the Ashkenazi world crumbled. What remains of Ashkenazi Jewry today is split into irreconcilable religious camps on the one hand, and a large body of secularized Jews of greater or lesser ethnicity on the other. The Sephardi and Oriental Jews, who form the other great branch of world Jewry, had a very different encounter with the forces of modernity. This book examines some of their responses to its challenges. The Sephardi religious leaders, who had been historically more open to general culture, reacted with neither the anti-traditionalism of Reform Judaism nor the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox's uncompromising rejection of everything new. Their response was rather one of active and creative halakhic engagement coupled with a tolerant attitude toward the growing secularized elements of their communities. Much has been written on the social, economic, and political transformation of Sephardi and Oriental Jewry in the modern era. However, this is the first book in English devoted to the religious changes taking place in this important segment of Jewry which now constitutes the majority of Jews in the Jewish state.

Long neglected by scholars, the Dead Sea scrolls rewriting Samuel-Kings shed precious light on the ancient Jewish interpretation of these books. This volume brings all these texts together for the first time under one cover. Improved editions of the fragments, up-to-date commentary, and detailed discussions of the exegetical traditions embedded in these scrolls will be of interest to both scholars and students of Second Temple Jewish literature.

Offers a compelling look at how Orthodox Jewish LGBT persons in Israel became more accepted in their communities. Until fairly recently, Orthodox people in Israel could not imagine embracing their LGBT sexual or gender identity and staying within the Orthodox fold. But within the span of about a decade and a half, Orthodox LGBT people have forged social circles and communities and become much more visible. This has been a remarkable shift in a relatively short time span. Queer Judaism offers the compelling story of how Jewish LGBT persons in Israel created an effective social movement. Drawing on more than 120 interviews, Orit Avishai illustrates how LGBT Jews accomplished this radical change. She makes the case that it has taken multiple approaches to achieve recognition within the community, ranging from political activism to more personal interactions with religious leaders and community members, to simply creating spaces to go about their everyday lives. Orthodox LGBT Jews have drawn from their lived experiences as well as Jewish traditions, symbols, and mythologies to build this movement, motivated to embrace their sexual identity not in spite of, but rather because of, their commitment to Jewish scripture, tradition, and way of life. Unique and timely, Queer Judaism challenges popular conceptions of how LGBT people interact and identify with conservative communities of faith.

Shalom Sadik interrogates the nature of Maimonides' religious philosophy through examination of secrets in the philosopher's Guide for the Perplexed, the role of dialectic in his philosophy, the relationship between natural law and God's commandments, and the question of free will.

Through literary, historical, archaeological, and engendered readings, this collection of essays presents a multidisciplinary analysis of rabbinic texts. Such a conversation between diverse scholars illuminates the hermeneutical issues generated by the contemporary study of the Talmud and Midrash.

Constructive interreligious dialogue is only a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, most dialogue among believers was carried on as a debate aimed either to disprove the claims of the other, or to convert the other to one's own tradition. At the end of the nineteenth century, Protestant Christian missionaries of different denominations had created such a cacophony amongst themselves in the mission fields that they decided that it would be best if they could begin to overcome their own differences instead of confusing and even scandalizing the people whom they were trying to convert. By the middle of the twentieth century, the horrors of the Holocaust compelled Christians, especially mainline Protestants and Catholics, to enter into a serious dialogue with Jews, one of the consequences of which was the removal of claims by Christians to have replaced Judaism, and revising text books that communicated that message to Christian believers.
Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many branches of Christianity, not least the Catholic Church, are engaged in a world-wide constructive dialogue with Muslims, made all the more necessary by the terrorist attacks of September 11. In these new conversations, Muslim religious leaders took an important initiative when they sent their document, ''A Common Word Between Us, '' to all Christians in the West. It is an extraordinary document, for it makes a theological argument (various Christians in the West, including officials at the Vatican, have claimed that a ''theological conversation'' with Muslims is not possible) based on texts drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an, that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers share the God-given obligation to love God and each other in peace and justice.
The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sixteen Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim scholars to carry on an important theological exploration of the theme of ''learned ignorance.''