This book presents a new examination of ethical dictum 'The Golden Rule' exploring its formulation and significance in relation to the world's major religions.The Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the world's religions and has been considered by numerous religious figures and philosophers over the centuries. This new collection contains specially commissioned essays which take a fresh look at this guiding principle from a comparative perspective. Participants examine the formulation and significance of the Golden Rule in the world's major religions by applying four questions to the tradition they consider: What does it say? What does it mean? How does it work? How does it matter?Freshly examining the Golden Rule in broad comparative context provides a fascinating account of its uses and meaning, and allows us to assess if, how and why it matters in human cultures and societies.

"The Mishnah is the crown jewel of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age," so says the distinguished author of this book. Initiated in the aftermath of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and developed and amplified over the next five centuries, the Mishnah is the product of an age of calamity giving birth to a renewed search for recovery. As such, it speaks to every age, but to none more particularly and clearly than to our own which has witnessed the destruction wrought by the Shoah and the return to the land of Israel.
Nevertheless, the Mishnah does not explicitly address the agenda of the contemporary world. To reduce the social theology and legal system of the Mishnah to a specific historical setting would be to distort its religious mission which, as Jacob Neusner affirms, is to influence while transcending the world of time and circumstance.
The Mishnah is not a series of niggling precepts, as its misinterpreters contend, but neither is it simply a source of interesting information or of legal directives for shaping everyday life. Rather, the central theme of Making God's Word Work is that throughout the rules and norms of the Mishnah, and beneath their surface, is a governing theological pattern which both defines the detail relating to social conduct as well as brings to the fore a coherent system of analysis, thought, and argumen. "The Mishnah is a law code in form, a work of philosophy and theology in substance, and a work of natural history in execution. Its medium of expression and mode of thinking mark it as close to unique among philosophical and theological writings."
Making God's Word Work will be of interest not only to students of Judaica or those who practice Judaism, but also to students of the history of religions and of comparative religion. Additionally, the book will fascinate philosophers, theologians, literary critics, and humanists in general for its remarkable insights into a way of discursive analysis and rigorous argumentation that is without parallel among the foundational documents of the great world religions.

The oldest of the world's major faiths, Judaism as practiced today represents a tradition that goes back nearly 6,000 years. Accessible and wide-ranging, Judaism: The Basics is a must-have resource covering the stories, beliefs and expressions of that tradition.

Key topics covered include:

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• the Torah
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• Israel - the state and its people
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• Passover
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• Reform Judaism, Orthodox Judaism and Zionism
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• the impact of the Holocaust.

With a glossary of terms and extensive suggestions for further reading, Judaism: The Basics is an essential guide through the rich intricacies of the Jewish faith and people.

Judaism and Islam compare because they concur that God cares deeply not only about attitudes but actions, not only about what one says to God but how one conducts affairs at home and in the village.
In this sourcebook, the authors have selected key passages from the laws of Judaism and Islam which allow a close examination of their mode of expression and medium of thought as well as the substance of the laws themselves. The selected passages concentrate on areas critical to the life of piety and faith as actually practised within the two faith-communities - the relationship between the believer and God, between and among believers, at home in marriage, outside the home in the community and between the faithful and the infidels (for Islam) or idolaters (for Judaism).
Judaism and Islam in Practice presents an invaluable collection of sources of Jewish and Islamic law and provides a unique analysis of the similarities and contrasts between the two faiths.

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.

First published in 1993, Israel and Zion in American Judaism: The Zionist Fulfillment is a collection of 24 essays exploring the concept of who or what is "Israel" following the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 and the subsequent crisis of self-definition in American Jewry.

The basis of this collection of essays is the reading of a common topic from different perspectives. Half of the book is devoted to the comparative study of religions and the courses are offered by religion professors. The other half is shaped by social science approaches and the seminars are given mainly by social science professors. We aim to compare and contrast not only positions, but also methods of learning. We examine theories of the just war in diverse cultural contexts and their disciplinary settings. Space is devoted to the study of papers prepared for this project by specialists in various disciplines, mainly but not exclusively faculty of Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

This book surveys the treatment of war and peace in the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity: to what does Judaism refer when it speaks of war and peace in the context of the Hebrew words "milhamah" (war) and "shalom" (peace)? But this study is not lexical. It is categorical. "War" represents a commanding, coherent category-formation, while "peace" covers a variety of circumstances and transactions. "War" is specifically a Halakhic category and "Peace" an Aggadic taxon. Do "war" and "peace" present us with a lexical or a categorical phenomenon? War forms a category-formation and peace is a substantive - a word bearing diffuse references. With what consequence? When we come across the word "war" without further data, we know the context and intent, but "peace" covers a mass of miscellaneous, free-standing facts and diverse implications.

This book is an exercise in the systematic recourse to anachronism as a theological-exegetical mode of apologetics. Specifically, Neusner demonstrates the capacity of the Rabbinic sages to read ideas attested in their own day as authoritative testaments to - to them - ancient times. Thus, Scripture was read as integral testimony to the contemporary scene. About a millennium - 750 B.C. E. to 350 C. E. - separates Scripture's prophets from the later sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud. It is quite natural to recognize evidence for differences over a long period of time. Yet Judaism sees itself as a continuum and overcomes difference. The latecomers portray the ancients like themselves. "In our image, after our likeness" captures the current aspiration. The sages accommodated the later documents in their canon by finding the traits of their own time in the record of the remote past. They met the challenges to perfection that the sages brought about. Of what does the process of harmonization consist? To answer that question the author surveys the presentation of the prophets by the rabbis, beginning with Moses. To overcome the gap, Rabbinic sages turn Moses into a sage like themselves. The prophet performs wonders. The sage sets forth reasonable rulings. The conclusion expands on this account of matters to show the categorical solution that the sages adopted for themselves, and that is the happy outcome of the study.

First published in 1993, Israel and Zion in American Judaism: The Zionist Fulfillment is a collection of 24 essays exploring the concept of who or what is "Israel" following the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 and the subsequent crisis of self-definition in American Jewry.

This collection of seven essays draws on work done in 2010. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaisms and deals with comparisons of Judaisms. The papers include two commentaries on the current state of the academic study of Judaism. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the essays furthermore provide a precis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.

Of the score of documents in the Rabbinic canon that reached closure in late antiquity, the first six centuries of the Common Era, the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Text A (Abot de Rabbi Natan, henceforward: ARNA) proves the most difficult to classify in the canonical context. It presents a challenge because it is different in its indicative traits from any other in the Rabbinic documents of its period. In the conclusion, (Chapter Forty-Five), Neusner explains what is at stake for the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon in that observation. Jacob Neusner follows the procedures that have guided his prior work in situating Rabbinic documents within their formal context and in ordinal sequence in their larger canonical setting. After introducing the two documents compared here, Abot and ARNA, Neusner sets out a prologue explaining the analytical procedure. Then, he takes up a detailed probe of all the evidence and produces a hypothetical category-system of forms. This is exposed through a system of visual indicators, which Neusner defines and explains in the prologue to Part One. Part Two in two chapters follows. The results of Chapter Forty-Four, where Neusner tests the givens of the documentary hypothesis against the facts of ARNA and Abot, yield the concluding chapter, Chapter Forty-Five, where Neusner surveys the results for the entire document to see what rules govern in the context of the documentary hypothesis. These call into question the universal applicability of that hypothesis. There is no documentary program that derives uniquely from ARNA in canonical context.

Here is an answer to the question, what do we learn about the Rabbinic system from its encounter with the Prophetic books? This book analyzes the way in which Rabbinic Judaism in its formative canon received and made its own an important segment of the Israelite Scripture, the Halakhic or legal heritage of Prophecy. The author characterizes the traits of Rabbinic Judaism that come to the surface in that Judaism's engagement with the Halakhic writings of ancient Israelite literary prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. It proposses to discern the system and establish the coherence of the episodic Rabbinic exegesis of verses of Prophecy.

The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.

The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.

The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.

In the first six centuries of the Common Era, the Rabbis of formative Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, consulted the ancient Israelite prophets for guidance on issues of theology, law, history, and literature. In this anthology, Jacob Neusner collects and arranges in documentary sequence the Rabbinic comments on verses in the biblical prophets of Michael and Joel.

This analysis of how the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash made Jeremiah one of their own shows how Rabbinic Judaism rehearses the Prophetic message. Jeremiah offered hope to renew the relation that was broken, and Yohanan ben Zakkai promised another mode of atonement, involving individual conviction, and conduct. Joining the two yields, the thesis of this book is: in the case of Jeremiah Rabbinic Judaism continues and recapitulates Prophetic Judaism. Prophet and Rabbi confront the same kind of crisis with the same theological outcome. The Prophetic response to and the Rabbinic reading of the event of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem- the certainty of God's pardon and love- intersect. The problem of this study of Rabbi Jeremiah is to describe precisely how the Rabbis of the formative canon in the case of Jeremiah naturalized to their system- thus Rabbinized- Prophecy. In taking over the heritage of ancient Israelite Prophecy and law, have the Rabbis subverted Prophecy's religious vision or adapted and adopted it, making that vision their own? By identifying the principal propositions of the Prophet and by examining both the Rabbinic reading of the Prophet and the Rabbinic theology of those same propositions, Neusner answers that question.

The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy. They commented on much of the Scriptural heritage and they made it their own. This collection of the Rabbinic comments on biblical books makes easily accessible the Rabbinic reading of the prophetic heritage and opens the way to the study of how normative Judaism responded to the challenge of the prophetic writings.

In Analytical Templates of the Yerushalmi, Jacob Neusner systematically defines and classifies the four analytical initiatives of the Bavli in its encounter with the Mishnah. Neusner questions whether the Yerushalmi yields a comparable repertoire of fixed patterns of analysis. In covering four tractates, Neusner first presents a tractate of the Yerushalmi and inductively defines its program for analysis of the law seen in context. For each of the three additional tractates, Neusner creates a log of the forms and types of the exegetical templates brought to the Mishnah. Here the tractates are outlines, showing at a glance the program of each in the Yerushalmi. Each of the four divisions of the Mishnah covered by the Yerushalmi is represented by tractate. By compiling the data in this manner, Neusner makes possible an inductive account of the whole and concludes with remarks of the two Talmuds' analytical templates.

This anthology illustrates how Judaism's classical rabbis of the first seven centuries of the Common Era read the ancient Israelite scriptures. It presents, in particular, a selection of writings that show what happens to the five books of Moses at the hands of the Rabbinical sages of the formative age of Judaism. Each Midrash-compilation takes up a book of Scripture and systematically expounds the message that the Rabbis derive from that particular book. No statement by the rabbis of the meaning of a biblical book emerges as a mere paraphrase of the plain sense of Scripture itself. The compiler introduces the Rabbinic reading of the Five books of Moses, Genesis through Genesis Rabbah, Exodus through Mekhilta attributed to R. Ishmael, Leviticus through Leviticus Rabbah, Numbers through Sifre to Numbers, and Deuteronomy through Sifre to Deuteronomy. Genesis Rabbah shows how the rabbis found in the book of Genesis lessons of history realized in their own times. That approach to Scripture will not surprise Bible-believing Christians. Mekhilta attributed to R. Ishmael shows how the Ten Commandments are expounded in an inclusive spirit, so that the Commandments cover important aspects of everyday life. Leviticus Rabbah shows how the rabbis found in the laws of animal sacrifice lessons of both history and morality, once more an approach Christians will find congenial. The book of Numbers illustrates how the ancient rabbis read Scripture in such a way as to validate and justify rules that on the surface do not seem valid and just at all. In the case I have chosen, the treatment of the wife accused of infidelity, Numbers Chpater Five, the law of the Mishnah and the Tosefta affords to the accused wife rights that Scripture does not on the surface provide for her. We consider both the legal and the exegetical treatment of the topic, with its emphasis, for both norms of conduct and norms of conviction, upon God's justice. The book of Deuteronomy at Chapter Thirty-Two contains Moses's profound reflection on the me

In the first six centuries of the Common Era, the Rabbis of formative Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, consulted the ancient Israelite prophets for guidance on issues of theology, law, history, and literature. In this anthology, Jacob Neusner collects and arranges in documentary sequence the Rabbinic comments on verses in the biblical prophet Amos.

What purpose information? Facing a vast corpus of facts, the heirs of the Mishnah answered this question by showing the cogency of data. They adopted analytical templates that transcended details and transformed the Mishnah's collection of topical expositions into a system of law. This was accomplished in the Bavli, the Talmud of Babylonia, which systematized and imposed an orderly program on the numerous subjects treated by the Mishnah. The Bavli follows a limited repertoire of analytical procedures, and so in parsing the law it often says the same thing about many things. Four templates govern, two form clear patterns from the data and two use various analytical arguments to transform these patterns into generalizations. Two types of analytical arguments, dialectical or moving and formal or static, join the exegetical analyses of clarification and contextualization. The systematization of the law proceeded in four steps. First, the words, phrases, principles, and authorities of the Mishnah were clarified in a uniform manner, following a rigid pattern. Second, the laws of the Mishnah were harmonized and shown to be coherent. Third, the laws were exhibited to showcase their dynamic quality, which was conveyed through disputation. Fourth, the dialectical argument extended through many topics. In this book, the author systematically defines and classifies these four analytical initiatives of the Bavli.