Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses Maimonides' writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism.

Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Ralbag, Gersonides; 1288-1344), one of medieval Judaism's most original thinkers, wrote about such diverse subjects as astronomy, mathematics, Bible commentary, philosophical theology, "technical" philosophy, logic, Halakhah, and even satire. In his view, however, all these subjects were united as part of the Torah. Influenced profoundly by Maimonides, Gersonides nevertheless exercised greater rigor than Maimonides in interpreting the Torah in light of contemporary science, was more conservative in his understanding of the nature of the Torah's commandments, and was more optimistic about the possibility of wide-spread philosophical enlightenment. Gersonides was a witness to several crucial historical events, such as the expulsion of French Jewry of 1306 and the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy. Collaborating with prelates in his studies of astronomy and mathematics, he apparently had an entree into the Papal court at Avignon. Revered among Jews as the author of a classic commentary on the latter books of the Bible, Kellner portrays Gersonides as a true Renaissance man, whose view of Torah is vastly wider and more open than that held by many of those who treasure his memory.

What is the secret that Maimonides hides? He himself tells us: the rabbis of the Talmud used the expression ma'aseh bereshit ("Account of Creation") for what the Greeks called physics and used the expression ma'aseh merkavah ("Account of the Chariot") or what the Greeks called metaphysics. So why is this important? The consequences of these equations are momentous. Maimonides imports what we today would call science into the heart of Torah. This is allied to his universalism and to his conception of the commandments of the Torah as tools (which could in principle have been different), whose importance lies in the end they serve, and not in themselves. That being the case, true reward and punishment are not connected to behavior, no matter how saintly or how vile, but to proper conceptions of God, crystallized in the 'Thirteen Principles'. Maimonides hid these secrets from his fellow Jews, not out of fear of reprisal (protected as he was by his good friend, al-Qadi al-Fadl, he had no reason to fear them), but out of noblesse oblige. Exposing simple Jews (and their philosophically no less simple rabbis) to these truths could only lead to perplexity (in the best of circumstances) or to falling away from observance (in the worst of circumstances), neither of which Maimonides had any interest in promoting. One God wrote two books, as it were: Torah and Cosmos. The truly devout Jew realizes that he or she must study both books, or only have access to half of God's oeuvre. Born and educated in the United States, Menachem Kellner (Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis, 1973) has lived in Israel for the last 30 years. Author, editor, or translator of 16 books and over 100 scholarly articles, Kellner's most recent book is 'Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism' (2006).

Moses Maimonides, medieval Judaism's leading legist and philosopher, and a figure of central importance for contemporary Jewish self-understanding, held a view of Judaism which maintained the authority of the Talmudic rabbis in matters of Jewish law while allowing for free and open inquiry in matters of science and philosophy. Maimonides affirmed, not the superiority of the "moderns" (the scholars of his and subsequent generations) over the "ancients" (the Tannaim and Amoraim, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud) but the inherent equality of the two. The equality presented here is not equality of halakhic authority, but equality of ability, of essential human characteristics. In order to substantiate these claims, Kellner explores the related idea that Maimonides does not adopt the notion of "the decline of the generations", according to which each succeeding generation, or each succeeding epoch, is in some significant and religiously relevant sense inferior to preceding generations or epochs.

Maimonides ends each book of his legal code the Mishneh torah with a moral or philosophical reflection, in which he lifts his eyes, as it were, from purely halakhic concerns and surveys broader horizons. Menachem Kellner and David Gillis analyse these concluding paragraphs, examining their verbal and thematic echoes, their adaptation of rabbinic sources, and the way in which they coordinate with the Mishneh torah's underlying structures, in order to understand how they might influence our interpretation of the code as a whole-and indeed our view of Maimonides himself and his philosophy. Taking this unusual cross-section of the work, Kellner and Gillis conclude that the Mishneh torah presents not only a system of law, but also a system of universal values. They show how Maimonides fashions Jewish law and ritual as a programme for attaining ethical and intellectual ends that are accessible to all human beings, who are created equally in the image of God. Many reject the presentation of Maimonides as a universalist. The Mishneh torah especially is widely seen as a particularist sanctuary. This study shows how profoundly that view must be revised.

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses Maimonides' writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism.

Many books on Maimonides have been written and still more will appear. Few present Maimonides, as Menachem Kellner does against the actual religious background that informed his many innovative and influential choices. He not only analyses the thought of the great religious thinker but contextualizes it in terms of the 'proto-kabbalistic' Judaism that preceded him. Kellner shows how the Judaism that Maimonides knew had come to conceptualize the world as an enchanted universe, governed by occult affinities. He shows why Maimonides rejected this and how he went about doing it. Kellner argues that Maimonides' attempted reformation failed, the clearest proof of that being the success of the kabbalistic counter-reformation which his writings provoked. Kellner shows how Maimonides rethought Judaism in different ways. It is in highlighting this and identifying Maimonides as a religious reformer that this book makes its key contribution. Maimonides created a new Judaism, 'disenchanted', depersonalized, and challenging; a religion that is at the same time elitist and universalist. Kellner's analysis also shows the deep configuration of Judaism in a new light. If, as Moshe Idel says in his Foreword, Maimonides was able to 'reform so many aspects of rabbinic Judaism single-handedly, to enrich it by importing such dramatically different concepts, it shows that the profound structures of this religion are flexible enough to allow the emergence and success of astonishing reforms. The fact that, great as Maimonides was, he did not overcome the traditional forms of proto-kabbalism shows that the dynamic of religion is much more complex than subscribing to authorities, however widely accepted.'

The crucial question for today's Jewish world, Menachem Kellner argues, is not whether Jews will have Jewish grandchildren, but how many different sorts of mutually exclusive Judaisms those grandchildren will face. Kellner's short, brisk, and accessible book examines how the split that threatens the Jewish future can be avoided. The first six chapters of this strongly argued book analyse what religious faith means in classical Judaism and will be of interest to anyone seeking lucid insights into the nature of Judaism. The final chapter builds upon the conclusions of the first six in order to argue for a new way of construing the relationship of Orthodoxy to non-Orthodox Jews and institutions. Kellner argues that the Orthodox practice of framing the debate with non-Orthodox movements in terms of dogmatic fidelity contrasted with heresy is not the traditional Jewish approach, and that the debate could well be framed in other ways, ways that would allow all Jews to work together towards a less polarized Jewish future. Undoubtedly, Must a Jew Believe Anything? has the potential to make a difference to how Orthodoxy understands itself and its relationship to other Jewish movements in the modern world. For the second edition, the author has added a substantial Afterword, reviewing his thinking on the subject and addressing the reactions to the original edition.

Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought is an essay in the history of ideas which traces the development of creed formation in Judaism from its inception with Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) to the beginning of the sixteenth century when systematic attention to the problem disappeared from the agenda of Jewish intellectuals. The dogmatic systems of Maimonides, Duran, Crescas, Albo, Bibago, Abravanel, and a dozen lesser-known figures are described, analysed, and compared. Relevant texts are presented in English translation. For the most part these are texts which have never been critically edited and translated before. Among the theses defended in the book are the following: that systematic attention to dogma qua dogma was a new feature in Jewish theology introduced by Maimonides (for reasons examined at length in the book); that the subject languished for the two centuries after Maimonides' death until it was revived in fifteenth-century Spain in response to Christian attacks on Judaism; that the differing systems of dogma offered by medieval Jewish thinkers reflect not different conceptions of what Judaism is, but different conceptions of what a principle of Judaism is; and that the very project of creed formation reflects an essentially Greek as opposed to a biblical/rabbinic view of the nature of religious faith and that this accounts for much of the resistance which Maimonides' innovation aroused.

Moses Maimonides was the first medieval Jewish thinker to posit a set of dogmas for Judaism, his 'Thirteen Principles of Faith'. His statement initiated an extensive discussion among other medieval Jewish thinkers on the subject of dogma, which had an important impact on subsequent Jewish thought. The reaction to Maimonides' innovation was complex: some scholars accepted his position without reservation; others accepted the idea that Jewish beliefs could be reduced to a creed but disagreed with Maimonides' formulation; still others rejected the project of creed formulation in Judaism altogether. The locus classicus of this last position is the Rosh Amanah of Isaac Abranavel (1437-1508). Abravanel's ostensible aim in writing Rosh Amanah was to defend Maimonides' creed from the attacks of its critics, notably Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, and it contains the most exhaustive and systematic analysis of the Thirteen Principles ever written. After twenty-two chapters of sustained and zealous defence of Maimonides, however, Abravanel seems to contradict himself, arguing at the end of his book that in fact Judaism has no dogmas whatsoever and that all its beliefs are equally valid, fundamental, and precious. This is the first complete English translation of Abravanel's classic work, and includes a comprehensive introduction and notes.