This Festschrift in honor of Professor Lawrence H. Schiffman, a leading authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism, includes contributions by twenty of his disciples, each of whom is a scholar in their own right. The many subjects covered display a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

In this volume, Lawrence Schiffman and Michael Swartz assemble a collection of Jewish incantation texts which were copied in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Many of these texts, now held in Cambridge University Library, are published here for the first time. All the texts are translated and supplemented by detailed philological and historical commentary, tracing the praxis and beliefs of the Jewish magical tradition of Late Antiquity. Their relation to Jewish legal and mystical teachings is also explored. 'A major contribution to this area of inquiry. Fourteen incantation texts are made accessible here. They are framed with all the desired apparatus: clear facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, commentary, substantial bibliography and three indexes. The lengthy introduction, in particular, is valuable, providing a mise au point for future study of Genizah magical texts.' s teven m. wasserstorm, ajs review Lawrence H. Schiffman is the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, USA. He is a member of the Enoch seminar and of the Advisory Board of The Journal Henoch. Michael D.Swartz is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, USA.

Tomas and Anneke are tourists who come to stay at Makhulu?s Bed and Breakfast. They are really enjoying their stay until Tomas loses his wallet! Where could it have gone? They search everywhere for it? Lindiwe wants to help but everyone says she?s too young and she?ll just get in the way.

How does Lindiwe become the hero who saves the day?

He's not a talking head you see on the Sunday shows...well, at least not yet. But Michael Swartz comes to the written world of political punditry and problem-solving armed with two great weapons: the common sense to know how much government is too much and easy access to perhaps the most important non-religious text known to mankind, the United States Constitution. Michael knows that what it does not say is just as important as what the Founding Fathers wrote there. In So We May Breathe Free: Avoiding Ineptocracy, Michael breaks down many of the nation's problems into easy-to-digest chapters and suggests how these burning questions can eventually be solved once and for all. It's not a quick fix to be sure, but if you believe as he does that our best days can lie ahead, you'll agree it's work worth doing. Despite what was rosily predicted to us in 2008, change does not come easy. Furthermore, it has to be change in the right direction and that's been sorely lacking in America over the last several decades. If you truly yearn to breathe free, this book is a must-read.