Jewish Women's History from Antiquity to the Present is broad in geographical scope exploring Jewish women's lives in what is now Eastern and Western Europe, Britain, Israel, Turkey, North Africa, and North America. Editors Federica Francesconi and Rebecca Lynn Winer focus the volume on reconstructing the experiences of ordinary women and situating those of the extraordinary and famous within the gender systems of their times and places. The twenty-one contributors analyze the history of Jewish women in the light of gender as religious, cultural, and social construct. They apply new methodologies in approaching rabbinic sources, prescriptive literature, and musar (ethics), interrogating them about female roles in the biblical and rabbinic imaginations, and in relation to women's restrictions and quotidian actions on the ground. They explore Jewish's women experiences of persecution, displacement, immigration, integration, and social mobility from the medieval age through the nineteenth century. And for the modern era, this volume assesses women's spiritual developments; how they experienced changes in religious and political societies, both Jewish and non-Jewish; the history of women in the Holocaust, their struggle through persecution and deportation; women's everyday concerns, Jewish lesbian activism, and the spiritual sphere in the contemporary era. Contributors reinterpret rabbinical responsa through new lenses and study a plethora of unpublished and previously unknown archival sources, such as community ordinances and court records, alongside autobiographies, letters, poetry, narrative prose, devotional objects, the built environment, illuminated manuscripts, and early printed books. This publication is significant within the field of Jewish studies and beyond; the essays include comparative material and have the potential to reach scholarly audiences in many related fields but are also written to be accessible to all, with the introductions in every chapter aimed at orienting the enthusiast from outside academia to each time and place.

In this novel and lucid work, Christopher Houston clarifies a particular modern style and practice of politics that he calls anthropocracy. In the name of popular sovereignty, anthropocracies de-legitimize the rule of God(s) even as they re-deploy it to stabilize the rule of the representatives of the people, all the while obfuscating their political conscription of the divine. In distinguishing anthropocracy from varieties of other secular and laicist political arrangements, as well as from theocracy, this book also gives readers a brilliant solution to what it calls the Turkish puzzle, the dilemma over how to best describe and analyze state-religion and state-society relations in the Turkish Republic. This work convincingly undermines two orthodox presumptions about Turkish politics: the claim that Turkish modernity should be considered an example of secularity; and the accusation that the current AKP government should be interpreted as Islamic. On the contrary, it argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic.

This collection of essays explores the nature of political and religious leadership in Shi'ism. Contributors look at a variety of critical historical periods--from medieval to modern--to reveal the social, political, and theological factors that have influenced the development of Shi'ite leadership.

This book is about the legendary Rajput chieftain Hammira Chauhan, the king of the impregnable fortress of Ranthambore in southern Rajasthan who died in 1301 CE after a monumental battle against Alauddin Khalji, the sultan of Delhi. This singular event reverberates through time to the point of creating a historical and cultural region that crystallizes through copious texts composed in different genres and languages (Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Rajasthani, English) in shifting religious and political contexts, medieval as well as modern. The main poetical-historical work composed in Sanskrit, the Hammira-Mahakavya ('great poem') by the Jaina poet Nayachandra Suri (15th century), is propelled by a dream in which the dead king urges the poet to write about his deeds. Can history with its preoccupation for the factual, begin in a dream? What does it mean to think about history and time via the imagination? Is time, whether past, present or future linked to imagination? Do imagination, time, and history arise together? What are the implications of thinking of history as something that appears in our experience? What does it mean to write a history as a historical being in whom diverse temporalities intertwine in the here and now?

"The Buddhist Experience in America" explores how the world's fourth-largest religion came to America and flourished here. Although the percentage of Buddhists in America has always been, and will probably remain, low, Buddhism has had a greater impact on culture than its small numbers might indicate. Concepts such as Nirvana and practices such as meditation have entered the mainstream of American life. Zen has turned into a commonplace adjective, and everybody knows who the Dalai Lama is. But Buddhism is a much more complex and powerful phenomenon than is indicated a catchy phrase, a political cause, or devotion to a charismatic personality. This book provides an accessible introduction to the religion, as well as to how Buddhists follow their beliefs in the United States.

Just as the teachings of Jesus gave birth to Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and hundreds of different Protestant sects, the teachings of the historical Buddha developed into many different traditions. "The Buddhist Experience in America" examines how these traditions are practiced: Theravada Buddhism, oldest of Buddhist sects, was the last to have a substantial presence in this country; the Mahayana tradition, with particular attention to Pure Land Buddhism, the Buddhism of most Japanese- and Chinese-Americans; the special case of Zen Buddhism, which, while a distinctly minority religion is Japan, has been historically the greatest Buddhist influence in America; and Vajrayana, or Tibetan Buddhism, currently the fastest growing school of Buddhism in America. The book includes a discussion of the historical Buddha and an examination of how contemporary Buddhism has responded to current issues and concerns. Appendices include a glossary, a who's who of Buddhism, a timeline, and a list of resources for further information.

This book comprehensively discusses the topic of Jews fleeing the Holocaust to China. It is divided into three parts: historical facts; theories; and the Chinese model. The first part addresses the formation, development and end of the Jewish refugee community in China, offering a systematic review of the history of Jewish Diaspora, including historical and recent events bringing European Jews to China; Jewish refugees arriving in China: route, time, number and settlement; the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai; Jewish refugees in other Chinese cities; the "Final Solution" for Jewish refugees in Shanghai and the "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees"; friendship between the Jewish refugees and the local Chinese people; the departure of Jews and the end of the Jewish refugee community in China. The second part provides deeper perspectives on the Jewish refugees in China and the relationship between Jews and the Chinese. The third part explores the Chinese model in the history of Jewish Diaspora, focusing on the Jews fleeing the Holocaust to China and compares the Jewish refugees in China with those in other parts of the world. It also introduces the Chinese model concept and presents the five features of the model.

For centuries Christians and Muslims have engaged with each other in manifold ways, peaceful and otherwise, be it in scholarly study, or in war and colonization. Today, Christians represent an influential body of opinion that largely perceives Islam, post 9/11, as a threat. Yet Muslims represent approximately one third of the world's population. Improved understanding between Christians and Muslims is therefore crucial and a prerequisite for universal peace and justice. This book aims to investigate Islam's place in the world, Muslim aspirations vis-a-vis non-Muslims and the realities of how Muslims are perceived and how they perceive others. Each chapter analyses accessible texts from central thinkers and commentators, broadly split into two camps: confrontational or conciliatory. Christian-Muslim relations are set in the wider context of civilizational, geo-political and economic interaction between the Muslim world and the historically Christian West.

From false idols and graven images to the tombs of kings and the shrines of capitalism, the targeted destruction of cities, sacred sites and artifacts for religious, political or nationalistic reasons is central to our cultural legacy. This book examines the different traditions of image-breaking in Christianity and Islam as well as their development into nominally secular movements and paints a vivid, scholarly picture of a culture of destruction encompassing Protestantism, Wahhabism, and Nationalism. Beginning with a comparative account of Calvinist Geneva and Wahhabi Mecca, The Politics of Iconoclasm explores the religious and political agendas behind acts of image-breaking and their relation to nationhood and state-building. From sixteenth-century Geneva to urban developments in Mecca today, The Politics of Iconoclasm explores the history of image-breaking, the culture of violence and its paradoxical roots in the desire for renewal. Examining these dynamics of nationhood, technology, destruction and memory, a historical journey is described in which the temple is razed and replaced by the machine.

This volume delves into the socio religious milieu of the authors, editors, and propagators of the ""Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra"" (Questions of Rastrapala), a Buddhist text circulating in India during the first half of the first millennium C.E. Daniel Boucher first reflects upon the problems that plague historians of Mahayana Buddhism, whose previous efforts to comprehend the tradition have often ignored the social dynamics that motivated some of the innovations of this new literature. Following that is a careful analysis of several motifs found in the Indian text and an examination of the value of the earliest Chinese translation for charting the sutra's evolution.The first part of the study looks at the relationship between the bodily glorification of the Buddha and the ascetic career that produced it within the socioeconomic world of early medieval Buddhist monasticism. Boucher then focuses on a third-century Chinese translation of the sutra and traces the changes in the translation to the late tenth century. He concludes with an annotated translation of the sutra based on a new reading of its earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript.

Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living, and one of the wonders of the world. In eighty-one brief chapters, the Tao Te Ching looks at the basic predicament of being alive and gives advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit.

This book is about wisdom in action. It teaches how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao (the basic principle of the universe) and applies equally to good government and sexual love; to child rearing, business, and ecology.

Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

Salomon Maimon was one of the most important and influential Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment. This is the first English translation of his principal work, first published in Berlin in 1790. "Essay on Transcendental Philosophy" presents the first English translation of Salomon Maimon's principal work, originally published in Berlin in 1790. This book expresses his response to the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". Kant himself was full of praise for the book and it went on to exercise a decisive influence on the course of post-Kantian German idealism. Yet, despite his importance for the work of such key thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Maimon never achieved the prominence he deserved. Today interest in Maimon's work is increasing rapidly, thanks in large part to prominent acclaim by Gilles Deleuze. This long-overdue translation brings Maimon's seminal text to an English-speaking audience for the first time. The text includes a comprehensive introduction, a glossary, translator's notes and a full bibliography. It also includes translations of correspondence between Maimon and Kant and a letter Maimon wrote to a Berlin journal clarifying the philosophical position of the Essay, all of which bring alive the context of the book's publication for the modern reader.