The book of Jeremiah poses a challenge to biblical scholarship in terms of its literary composition and textual fluidity. This study offers an innovative approach to the problem by focusing on an instructive case study. Building on the critical recognition that the prophecy contained in Jer 10:1-16 is a composite text, this study systematically discusses the various literary strands discernible in the prophecy: satirical depictions of idolatry, an Aramaic citation, and hymnic passages. A chapter is devoted to each strand, revealing its compositional development-from the earliest recoverable stages down to its late reception. A range of pertinent evidence-culled from the literary, text-critical, and linguistic realms-is examined and sets within broader perspectives, with an eye open to cultural history and the development of theological outlook. The investigation of a particular text has important implications for the textual and compositional history of Jeremiah as a whole. Rather than settling for the common opinion that Jeremiah developed in two main stages, reflected in the MT and LXX respectively, a nuanced supplementary model is advocated, which better accords with the complexity of the available evidence.

Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look at the Bible, Midrash, and God, is a collection of 15 articles which are exemplars of the state of the art of feminist Jewish interpretation of biblical texts. In these articles Naomi Graetz explores some of the reasons why biblical women are extolled in post-biblical sources when they adhere to their prescribed roles yet deprecated by these same midrashic sources when they speak up. The author demonstrates that much of present-day thinking about Jewish marriage is conditioned by metaphors. She discusses the theological implications of the dangerous marriage metaphor which describes God and Israel in an abusive husband and wife relationship and addresses the problem of God's responsibility for Israel's suffering. Graetz combats the approach of rabbinical midrash, not only by critique, but by writing Jewish midrash that is consciously feminist in its intent. Naomi Graetz is the author of The Rabbi's Wife Plays at Murder (Shiluv Press, 2004); S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories (Gorgias Press, 2003) and Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (Jason Aronson, 1998). She has written many articles about women and metaphor in the Bible and Midrash. Graetz teaches critical reading skills at Ben-Gurion University in the English Department and describes herself as a feminist Jew who is grounded both in Jewish tradition and feminist thought who has to grapple with problems of modernity while seeing the value of tradition.

After centuries of persecution, oppression, forced migrations, and exclusion in the name of Christ, the development of a Jewish "Quest for the Historical Jesus" might seem unexpected. This book gives an overview and analysis of the various Jewish perspectives on the Nazarene throughout the centuries, emphasizing the variety of German voices in Anglo-American contexts. It explores the reasons for a steady increase in Jewish interest in Jesus since the end of the eighteenth century, arguing that this growth had a strategic goal: the justification of Judaism as a living faith alongside Christianity.

There can be little doubt that the Holocaust was an event of major consequence for the twentieth century. While there have been innumerable volumes published on the implications of the Holocaust for history, philosophy, and ethics, there has been a surprising lack of attention paid to the theoretical and practical effects of the Shoah on biblical interpretation.

Strange Fire addresses the implications of the Holocaust for interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, bringing together a diverse and distinguished range of contributors, including Richard Rubenstein, Elie Wiesel, and Walter Brueggemann, to discuss theoretical and methodological considerations emerging from the Shoah and to demonstrate the importance of these considerations in the reading of specific biblical texts. The volume addresses such issues as Jewish and Christian biblical theology after the Holocaust, the ethics of Christian appropriation of Jewish scripture, and the rethinking of biblical models of suffering and sacrifice from a post-Holocaust perspective.

The first book of its kind, Strange Fire will establish a benchmark for all future work on the topic.

Current tendencies in religious studies and theology show a growing interest for the interchange between religions and the cultures of rationalization surrounding them. The studies published in this volume, based on the international conferences of both the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, aim to contribute to this field of interest by dealing with concepts and influences of rationalization in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and religion in general. In addition to taking a closer look at the immediate links in the history of tradition between those rationalizing movements and evolutions in religion, emphasis is put on intellectual-historical convergences: Therefore, the articles are led by central comparative questions, such as what factors foster/hinder rationalization?; where are criteria for rationalization drawn from?; in which institutions is rationalization taking place?; who propagates, supports and utilizes rationalization?

Mystic Trends in Judaism analyzes the development of the Jews' relationship to God as expressed in kabbala, messianism, hasidism, the cult of the tzadikim and, finally, as reflected in three classic Yiddish writers. The twofold significance of the kabbala-as a mystical conception of a cosmic world, and as a nationalist concept of the Jewish people-merged, in the conviction that this people was chosen to bring universal redemption to all people, on earth. Arnold Posy notes that the mystical revelations of the kabbala and the empirical conclusions of modern science share an awareness of the existence of a world beyond the world of matter as perceived by the physical senses.

This volume brings together Jewish and Christian scholars with perspectives on Creation in the Bible (Tanakh, Old Testament, New Testament), in ancient Egypt and Israel, and at Qumran, as well as contemporary theological, philosophical and political issues raised by the biblical, Jewish and Christian concepts of creation.

A detailed examination of Proverbs 1-9, an early Jewish poetic work. Stuart Weeks incorporates studies of literature from ancient Egypt and from the Dead Sea scrolls, but his focus is on the background and use of certain key images in the text. Proverbs 1-9 belongs to an important class of biblical literature (wisdom literature), and is less well known as a whole than the related books of Job and Ecclesiastes, partly because it has been viewed until recently as a dull and muddled school-book. However, parts of it have been profoundly influential on the development of both Judaism and Christianity, and occupy a key role in modern feminist theology. Weeks demonstrates that those parts belong to a much broader and more intricate set of ideas than older scholarship allowed.

Jeffrey L. Rubenstein offers a translation from the Hebrew of The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud by David Weiss Halivni. Halivni's work is widely regarded as the most comprehensive scholarly examination of the processes of composition and editing of the Babylonian Talmud. Halivni presents the summation of a lifetime of scholarship and the conclusions of his multivolume Talmudic commentary, Sources and Traditions (Meqorot umesorot). Arguing against the traditional view that the Talmud was composed c. 450 CE by the last of the named sages in the Talmud, the Amoraim, Halivni proposes that its formation took place over a much longer period of time, not reaching its final form until about 750 CE. The Talmud consists of many literary strata or layers, with later layers constantly commenting upon and reinterpreting earlier layers. The later layers differ qualitatively from the earlier layers, and were composed by anonymous sages whom Halivni calls Stammaim. These sages were the true author-editors of the Talmud, who reconstructed the reasons underpinning earlier rulings, created the dialectical argumentation characteristic of the Talmud, and formulated the literary units that make up the Talmudic text. Halivni also discusses the history and development of rabbinic tradition from the Mishnah through the post-Talmud legal codes, the types of dialectical analysis found in the different rabbinic works, and the roles of reciters, transmitters, compilers, and editors in the composition of the Talmud. This volume contains an introduction and annotations by Jeffrey Rubenstein.

As with the first two volumes in this series, The Talmud for Beginners, Volume 3: Living in a Non-Jewish World, introduces the beginner to an important book of the Talmud; in this case, Avodah Zarah, translated as "Strange Worship." The theme, generally speaking, is Jewish relations with non-Jews.

The book presents and discusses a large corpus of Jewish maps of the Holy Land that were drawn by Jewish scholars from the 11th to the 20th century, and thus fills a significant lacuna both in the history of cartography and in Jewish studies. The maps depict the biblical borders of the Holy Land, the allotments of the tribes, and the forty years of wanderings in the desert. Most of these maps are in Hebrew although there are several in Yiddish, Ladino and in European languages. The book focuses on four aspects: it presents an up-to-date corpus of known maps of various types and genres; it suggests a classification of these maps according to their source, shape and content; it presents and analyses the main topics that were depicted in the maps; and it puts the maps in their historical and cultural contexts, both within the Jewish world and the sphere of European cartography of their time. The book is an innovative contribution to the fields of history of cartography and Jewish studies. It is written for both professional readers and the general public. The Hebrew edition (2014), won the Izhak Ben-Zvi Prize.

Tis title provides impressive dossier on the phenomenon of Saturnism, offering a new interpretation of aspects of Judaism, including the emergence of Sabbateanism. This book explores the phenomenon of Saturnism, namely the belief that the planet Saturn, as described by ancient astrology, influenced Jews, reverberating into Jewish life. Taking into consideration the astrological aspects of Judaism, Moshe Idel demonstrates that they were instrumental in the conviction that Sabbatei Tzevei, the mid-17th-century messianic figure in Rabbinic Judaism, was indeed the Messiah. Offering a new approach to the study of this mass-movement known as Sabbateanism, Idel also explores the possible impact of astrology on the understanding of Sabbath as related to sorcery and thus to the concept of the encounter of witches in the late 14th and early 15th century. This book further analyzes aspects of 20th-century scholarship and thought influenced by Saturnism, particularly lingering themes in the works of Gershom Scholem and seminal figure Walter Benjamin. "The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies" publishes new research which provides new directions for modern Jewish thought and life and which serves to enhance the quality of dialogue between classical sources and the modern world. This book series reflects the mission of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and leadership institute, at the forefront of Jewish thought and education. It empowers scholars, rabbis, educators and layleaders to develop new and diverse voices within the tradition, laying foundations for the future of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.

This book is the first collection of multi-disciplinary research on the experience of Italian-Jewish musicians and composers in Fascist Italy. Drawing together seven diverse essays from both established and emerging scholars across a range of fields, this book examines multiple aspects of this neglected period of music history, including the marginalization and expulsion of Jewish musicians and composers from Italian theatres and conservatories after the 1938-39 Race Laws, and their subsequent exile and persecution. Using a variety of critical perspectives and innovative methodological approaches, these essays reconstruct and analyze the impact that the Italian Race Laws and Fascist Italy's musical relations with Nazi Germany had on the lives and works of Italian Jewish composers from 1933 to 1945. These original contributions on relatively unresearched aspects of historical musicology offer new insight into the relationship between the Fascist regime and music.

Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East provides a window for readers of English around the world into hitherto almost inaccessible halakhic and ideational writings expressing major aspects of the cultural intellectual creativity of Sephardic-Oriental rabbis in modern times. The text has three sections: Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, and each section discusses a range of original sources that reflect and represent the creativity of major rabbinic figures in these countries. The contents of the writings of these Sephardic rabbis challenge many commonly held views regarding Judaism's responses to modern challenges. By bringing an additional, non-Western voice into the intellectual arena, this book enriches the field of contemporary discussions regarding the present and future of Judaism. In addition, it focuses attention on the fact that not only was Judaism a Middle Eastern phenomenon for most of its existence but that also in recent centuries important and interesting aspects of Judaism developed in the Middle East. Both Jews and non-Jews will be enriched and challenged by this non-Eurocentric view of modern Judaic creativity.

The occurrence of treaties throughout the Ancient Near East has been investigated on a number of occasions, generally in order to resolve certain questions arising in the biblical field. As a result of that focus, the existence of a similar institution in a number of different cultures has not been treated as a problem in itself. Generally the existence of treaties throughout the area has been taken for granted, or a simple borrowing model has been used to explain how similar forms came to be used in different cultures. Why forms were similar across the area has not been probed. This work investigates treaty occurrences in different cultures and finds that the forms used correlate with ways of maintaining political control both internally and over vassals. Related concepts are projected in official accounts of history. Thus one can roughly distinguish threats based on power from persuasion based on benevolence and historical precedent, though various combinations of these two occur. There is a likely further connection of the means chosen to the degree of centralisation of power within the society. Underlying the local traditions is a common tradition which has to be dated to the pre-literate period. Biblical covenants fit within this pattern. The cultures treated are Mesopotamia, the Hittites, Egypt, Syrian centres and Israel.

.Breitowitz focuses on what many regard as the cutting issue of Jewish law as it grapples with the disintegrative forces of twentieth-century life: the problem of the Agunah or stranded wife. In addition, the Agunah issue raises intriguing questions about the impotence of religious law in a secular society and how the establishment and free exercise clauses intersect to facilitate or hinder the accommodation of religious interests.

All legal avenues available to secure relief are discussed, including the use of prenuptial agreements, the application of tort theory, and the rather exotic approach of the New York Get law, as well as the constitutional and common law impediments, to the implementation of these remedies. The text also includes comparative law material to illustrate how other legal systems, particularly the state of Israel, have handled this problem. As the most comprehensive book on the subject, it is invaluable to students of Jewish and family law and to practitioners of family law.

Zvi Mark uncovers previously unknown and never-before-discussed aspects of Rabbi Nachman's personal spiritual world. The first section of the book, Revelation, explores Rabbi Nachman's spiritual revelations, personal trials and spiritual experiments. Among the topics discussed is the powerful "Story of the Bread," wherein Rabbi Nachman receives the Torah as did Moses on Mount Sinai - a story that was kept secret for 200 years. The second section of the book, Rectification, is dedicated to the rituals of rectification that Rabbi Nachman established. These are, principally, the universal rectification, the rectification for a nocturnal emission and the rectification to be performed during pilgrimage to his grave. In this context, the secret story, "The Story of the Armor," is discussed. The book ends with a colorful description of Bratzlav Hasidism in the 21st century.