This superb collection of writings comes as a tribute to one of the leading scholars of Judaic Studies in our century, Alexander Altmann, and to the Institute of Jewish Studies, which he founded. His former students and colleagues present essays which touch upon the many areas of Professor Altmann's interests. The studies range from early rabbinic mystical texts to contemporary theological investigations. The majority of the articles explore leading figures and issues in medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy and mysticism.
Among the important persons whose writings are examined are Maimonides, Gersonides, Abraham Abulafia, Mendelssohn, Leo Strauss, and Altmann himself. The contributors to this volume are at the forefront of contemporary scholarship in the field.

"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.

For almost two thousand years, various images of Jesus accompanied Jewish thought and imagination: a flesh-and-blood Jew, a demon, a spoiled student, an idol, a brother, a (failed) Messiah, a nationalist rebel, a Greek god in Jewish garb, and more. This volume charts for the first time the different ways that Jesus has been represented and understood in Jewish culture and thought. Chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field cover the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - Talmud, Midrash, Rabbinics, Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Messianism, Hagiography, Modern Jewish Literature, Thought, Philosophy, and Art - to address the ways in which representations of Jesus contribute to and change Jewish self-understanding throughout the last two millennia. Beginning with the question of how we know that Jesus was a Jew, the book then moves through meticulous analyses of Jewish and Christian scripture and literature to provide a rounded and comprehensive analysis of Jesus in Jewish Culture. This multidisciplinary study will be of great interest not only to students of Jewish history and philosophy, but also to scholars of religious studies, Christianity, intellectual history, literature and cultural studies.

Find hope and renewal in life's natural cycle of ordinary losses and new beginnings.

"When we intentionally enter into our everyday walk through small losses, the terrain of larger losses, the valley of the shadow of death, is not totally unknown. It is not completely unfamiliar, alien, terrifying, for we have walked some of this way before with our lesser losses. We can journey through this valley of loss, for journey through it we must. And we can emerge markedly changed, but alive, on the other side." from the Prologue

Going beyond loss as a problem to be resolved, a grief to be worked through, Dr. Nancy Copeland-Payton, a spiritual director and ordained clergywoman, reframes loss from the perspective that our everyday losses help us learn what we need to handle the major losses. Weaving in spiritual and classical themes, personal and scriptural story, Dr. Copeland-Payton shows us that by becoming aware of what our lesser losses have to teach us, the larger losses of our lives become less terrifying. Each chapter includes a spiritual practice and questions for reflection to help you: Mine the hidden depths of painful losses of things and placesTraverse the devastating loss of relationships and the heart-wrenching death of people we love.Overcome the steep, dark slopes of loss of beliefs and faith.Venture past our fear of the losses of aging and our own death."

From its very beginnings in the eighteenth century, the Hasidic movement was suffused with a joyous enthusiasm and optimism derived from the notion of God being in all things. This led to an insistence on joy as an essential element in divine worship, and in consequence a distinctive attitude to prayer. This classic work, presented here with a new introduction, is a study of the attitudes of the hasidic rebbes to prayer. Louis Jacobs bases himself principally on the works compiled by rebbes themselves and records preserved by their disciples. Copious quotations from these writings form a sound basis for his masterly analysis-unsurpassed since it was first published in 1972-and enable the reader to gain a familiarity with Hasidic thought on the subject of divine worship at first hand.

1997 was the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls explores the evidence about calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish texts. James C. VanderKam examines the pertinent texts, their sources and the different uses to which people put calendrical information in the Christian world.
Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls provides a valuable addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls Series and contributes to the elucidation of the scroll texts themselves and their relation to other Biblical texts.

Modern critical scholars divide the Pentateuch into distinct components, identifying areas of unevenness in the scriptural tradition, which point to several interwoven documents rather than one immaculate whole. While the conclusions reached by such critical scholarship are still matters of dispute, the inconsistencies which it has identified stand clearly before us and pose a serious challenge to the believer in divine revelation. How can a text marred by contradiction be the legacy of Sinai? How can there be reverence for holy scriptures that show signs of human intervention? David Weiss Halivni explores these questions, not by disputing the evidence itself or by defending the absolute integrity of the Pentateuchal words at all costs, but rather by accepting the inconsistencies of the text as such and asking how this text might yet be a divine legacy.Inconsistencies and unevenness in the Pentateuchal scriptures are not the discovery of modern textual science alone. Halivni demonstrates that the earliest stewards of the Torah, including some of those represented in the Bible itself, were aware of discrepancies within the tradition. From the Book of Chronicles through the commentaries of the Rabbis, sensitive readers have perceived maculations, which mitigate against the notion of an unblemished, divine document, and have responded to these maculations in different ways.Revelation Restored asserts that acknowledging and accounting for human intervention in the Pentateuchal text is not alien to the Biblical or Rabbinic tradition and need not belie the tradition of revelation. Moreover, it argues that through recognizing textual problems in the scriptures, as well as efforts to resolve them in tradition, we may learn not only about the nature of the Pentateuch itself but also about the ongoing relationship between its people and its source.

Humor has had a profound effect on the way the Jewish people see the world, and has sustained them through millennia of hardships and suffering. God Laughed reviews, organizes, and categorizes the humor of the ancient Jewish texts the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Midrash in a clear, readable, and accessible manner. These works have influenced the Jewish people in many ways, and all are replete with humor and wit. Inevitably, this oeuvre of Jewish humor has itself influenced generations of comics, as well as genres of humor. The authors use examples of Biblical humor from several broad categories, including irony, sarcasm, wordplay, humorous names, humorous imagery, and humorous situations. Because their primary purpose is not to entertain, but to teach humanity how to live the ideal life, much of the humor in the Talmud and the Midrash has a single purpose: to demonstrate that evil is wrong and even, at times, ludicrous. This may help explain why approximately 1,500 years after its closing, the Talmud is still such a fascinating work. God Laughed is the latest addition to Transaction's Jewish Studies series.

Via a participant-observer approach, Synagogue Life analyzes the three essential dimensions of synagogue life: the houses of prayer, study, and assembly. In each Heilman documents the rich detail of the synagogue experience while articulating the social and cultural drama inherent in them. He illustrates how people come to the synagogue not only for spiritual purposes but also to find out where and how they fit into life in the neighborhood in which they share.

In his new introduction, Heilman discusses what led him to write this book and the process of personal transformation through which he, as an Orthodox Jew, had to go in order to turn a disciplined eye on the world from which he came. Rather than using the stranger-as-native approach of classic anthropology, he had instead to begin as a native who discoverd how to look at a once-taken-for-granted synagogue life like a stranger. In the afterword, arguing for the efficacy of this approach, Heilman offers guidance on how natives can use their special familiarity and still be trained to distance themselves from their own group, making use of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Synagogue Life offers a fascinating portrait that has something to say to social scientists as well as all those curious about what happens in the main arena of Orthodox Jewish community life.

The Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish doctrine adapted by author S.L. MacGregor Mathers to form the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organisation. This volume includes three of the critical books from the Zohar, the fundamental work in Kabbalah, as well as Mathers' introduction explaining the key elements of Jewish mysticism. Mathers' translation from Hebrew originally appeared in 1926, and it continues to be a valuable resource for students interested in Religious Studies, particularly Mysticism and the Occult.

The Creation of History in Ancient Israel demonstrates how the historian can start to piece together the history of ancient Israel using the Hebrew Bible as a source.

eBook available with sample pages: 020345524X

The Legacy of Boadicea explores the construction of personal and national identities in early modern England. It highlights the problems and anxieties of national identity in a nation with no native classical past.
Written in an accessible style, The Legacy of Boadicea:
* offers powerful new readings of the ancient British past in Shakespeare's King Lear and Cymbeline
* persuasively illuminates a 'Boadicean' heritage in royal iconography, drama, and the social symptoms of religious dissent
* articulates parallels between the eventual domestication of Britain's warrior queen in Restoration drama, and the social, political and legal decline in the status of women.

The author clarifies the meaning of the terms Messiah and Messianic and in the process places Jesus firmly among his own people and background. Recognition is given to the unique moral concepts of biblical teaching, from which Schonfield deduces a path to their universal implementation.

Judaism, as a religion and a way of life, has guided millions of lives and profoundly influenced its younger sisters, Christianity and Islam, as well as contributing major themes and norms to the liberal and humanistic traditions of the West. Not all Jews are religious, and not all of Judaism is philosophical; but at its core Judaism rests on a complex of values and ideas that address the abiding concerns of philosophy and perennial questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of the universe, the roots and fruits of human responsibility, the character of justice, the worth of nature, and the dignity of persons. Judaism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation examines some of the central questions that such ideas raise, drawing on the ancient and more recent sources of Jewish thought, as viewed from a contemporary philosophical standpoint. This book is an ideal introduction for students of religion and philosophy who want to gain an understanding of the key themes and values of Judaism.

This book, first published in 1925, aims to demonstrate the ultimate roots of the many religious ideas of the Hebrews in Canaanite thought. This book will be of interest to students of theology and religious studies.

This addition to the Curzon "Popular Dictionaries of Religion" series contains around 1400 entries, describing clearly and concisely all the key aspects of religion, culture and history in Judaism. Entries range from "Aaron" to "Zugot" via "abolition", "cherub", "documentary hypothesis", "euthanasia", "falashas", and many other interesting and essential topics. This is not only a reference tool for those who want to know more about the tradition, but a practical guide to the current Jewish interpretation of topics of universal interest.

The Book of Hiding offers a fluent and erudite analysis of the parallels between the Bible and contemporary discussions of gender, ethnicity and social ambiguity. Beal focuses particularly on the traditionally marginalised book of Esther, in order to examine closely the categories of self and other in relation to religion, sexism, nationalism, and the ever-looming legacies and future possibilities of annihilation. Beal applies the critical tools of contemporary theorists, such as Cixous, Irigaray and Levinas, challenging widely held assumptions about the moral and life-affirming message of Scripture and even about the presence of God in the book of Esther. The Book of Hiding draws together a variety of different perspectives and disciplines, creating a unique space for dialogue raising new questions and reconsidering old assumptions, which is profoundly interesting and well-articulated.

This volume argues the Judaic and Christian heirs of Scripture adopted, and adapted to their own purposes and tasks, Greek philosophical modes of thought and argument, and explores how the earliest intellectuals of Christianity and Judaism shaped a tradition of articulated conflict and reasoned argument in the search for religious truth that was to be shared through continuing that argument with others. Professors Chilton and Neusner examine, using the formative sources of Judaism and Christianity, the literary media of adaptation and reform: precisely where and how we identify in the foundation writings of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, the new opposing modes of articulated conflict and reasoned argument that through Christianity and Judaism, Greek philosophy and science bequeathed to the West. This volume provides an analysis of the genesis and evolution of Judaeo-Christian intellectual thought and identifies the modes of discourse in the Judaic and Christian intellectual and literary traditions.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is recognized both as a leading figure in Jewish thought and as one of the most radical philosophers of the Islamic world. This work provides a general introduction to his philosophy, exploring his arguments, especially those to be found in his "Guide of the perplexed", and examining their implications and validity. Oliver Leaman shows that Maimonides' arguments - on the immortality of the soul, the basis of morality, the creation of the world, the notion of prophecy, the concept of God - are related to his central account of the meaning of religious language, and ultimately to his theory of meaning itself. The discussion offers insight into the rich cultural atmosphere of the Islamic world during Maimonides' time, and shows him to be the outstanding personality in the development of Islamic civilization. The study reveals the significance of Maimonides to contemporary philosophical and theological problems, and should be of interest to philosophers, theologians, Islamicists, and medievalists.

This volume argues the Judaic and Christian heirs of Scripture adopted, and adapted to their own purposes and tasks, Greek philosophical modes of thought and argument, and explores how the earliest intellectuals of Christianity and Judaism shaped a tradition of articulated conflict and reasoned argument in the search for religious truth that was to be shared through continuing that argument with others. Professors Chilton and Neusner examine, using the formative sources of Judaism and Christianity, the literary media of adaptation and reform: precisely where and how we identify in the foundation writings of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, the new opposing modes of articulated conflict and reasoned argument that through Christianity and Judaism, Greek philosophy and science bequeathed to the West. This volume provides an analysis of the genesis and evolution of Judaeo-Christian intellectual thought and identifies the modes of discourse in the Judaic and Christian intellectual and literary traditions.

Since the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls were released in 1992, there has been an explosion of interest in them. This volume explores the issue of apocalypticism in the Scrolls; how the notions of the 'end', Messianic expectation and eternal life affected the Dead Sea sect, influenced Judaism and filtered into Christianity. Collins' volume provides a valuable and accessible introduction to the interpretation of the Scrolls, which is an informative addition to the series examining the major themes of the Scroll texts.

What is between us and the Christians is a deep dark affair which will go for another hundred generations . . ." (Amos Oz, Judas) Among the great social shifts of the post-World War II era is the unlikely sea-change in Jewish Christian relations. We read each other's scriptures and openly discuss differences as well as similarities. Yet many such encounters have become rote and predictable. Powerful emotions stirred up by these conversations are often dismissed or ignored. Demonstrating how such emotions as shame, envy, and desire can inform these encounters, Holy Envy: Writing in the Jewish Christian Borderzone charts a new way of thinking about interreligious relations. Moreover, by focusing on modern and contemporary writers (novelists and poets) who traffic in the volatile space between Judaism and Christianity, the book calls attention to the creative implications of these intense encounters. While recognizing a long-overdue need to address a fundamentally Christian narrative underwriting twentieth century American verse, Holy Envy does more than represent Christianity as an aesthetically coercive force, or as an adversarial other. For the book also suggests how literature can excavate an alternative interreligious space, at once risky and generative. In bringing together recent accounts of Jewish Christian relations, affect theory, and poetics, Holy Envy offers new ways into difficult and urgent, conversations about interreligious encounters. Holy Envy is sure to engage readers who are interested in literature, religion, and, above all, interfaith dialogue.

The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling provides a clear, practical guide to working with congregants in a range of settings and illustrates the skills and core principles needed for effective pastoral counseling. The material is drawn from Jewish life and rabbinic pastoral counseling, but the fundamental principles in these pages apply to all faith traditions and to a wide variety of counselling relationships. Drawing on relational psychodynamic ideas but writing in a very accessible style, Friedman and Yehuda cover when, how and why counseling may be sought, how to set up sessions, conduct the work in those sessions and deal with difficult situations, maintain confidentiality, conduct groupwork and approach traumatic and emotive subjects. They guide the reader through the foundational principles and topics of pastoral counseling and illustrate the journey with accessible and lively vignettes. By using real life examples accompanied by guided questions, the authors help readers to learn practical techniques as well as gain greater self-awareness of their own strengths and vulnerabilities. With a host of examples from pastoral and clinical experience, this book will be invaluable to anyone offering counselling to both the Jewish community and those of other faiths. The Art of Jewish Pastoral Counseling will appeal to psychoanalysts, particularly those working with Jewish clients, counselors, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and rabbis offering pastoral counseling, as well as clergy of other faiths such as ministers, priests, imams and lay chaplains.

Since the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls were released in 1992, there has been an explosion of interest in them. This volume explores the issue of apocalypticism in the Scrolls; how the notions of the 'end', Messianic expectation and eternal life affected the Dead Sea sect, influenced Judaism and filtered into Christianity. Collins' volume provides a valuable and accessible introduction to the interpretation of the Scrolls, which is an informative addition to the series examining the major themes of the Scroll texts.

The Invention of Ancient Israel shows how the history of ancient Palestine has been obscured by the search for Israel. Keith W. Whitelam argues that ancient Israel has been invented by scholars in the image of a European nation state. He explores the theological and political assumptions which have shaped research into ancient Israel by Biblical scholars, and contributed to the vast network of scholarship which Said identified as 'Orientalist discourse'.
Keith W. Whitelam's groundbreaking study argues that Biblical scholars, through their traditional view of this region, have contributed to dispossession of both a Palestinian land and a Palestinian past. This is important reading for historians, biblical specialists, social anthropologists and all those who are interested in the history of ancient Israel and Palestine.