This book analyzes the exceptional normative impact of R. Meir Simcha Hacohen's Biblical commentary, Meshekh Hokhmah, and his halakhic commentary, Or Sameah. It examines the reliance of the poskim on R. Meir Simcha's innovations and hermeneutic methods as well as their view of his interpretations that broadened or narrowed the scope of Maimonides' rulings. The book explores the broad-based judicial principles underlying R. Meir Simcha's legal decisions and approach to Jewish law. It further examines how his legal creativity was impacted by metahalakhic principles that guided him in addressing changing historical and social realities. The book also considers R. Meir Simcha's unique attitudes toward gentiles. His approach attests to his innovativeness and his halakhic moderation, as he tried to rule as leniently as possible on matters concerning non-Jews. In this book, R. Meir Simcha is shown to be a truly influential rabbi whose contributions will long be a source of study and discussion.

This book contextualizes Rabbinic Judaism by emphasizing that the framers of Rabbinic thought were in conversation with cultures different from their own as much as with their own tradition. In a series of seven essays, presented here for the first time, the authors challenge the reader's assumptions about Judaism in the Second Temple period, late antiquity, and the early medieval era. Arranged in chronological order according to the period of time they focus on, the essays analyze texts such as the Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman Egyptian texts, Greek and Latin works, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early and late midrashic texts, the New Testament, the Church fathers' writings, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds, and Zoroastrian texts.