Teaching the Historical Jesus in his Jewish context to students of varied religious backgrounds presents instructors with not only challenges, but also opportunities to sustain interfaith dialogue and foster mutual understanding and respect. This new collection explores these challenges and opportunities, gathering together experiential lessons drawn from teaching Jesus in a wide variety of settings-from the public, secular two- or four-year college, to the Jesuit university, to the Rabbinic school or seminary, to the orthodox, religious Israeli university. A diverse group of Jewish and Christian scholars reflect on their own classroom experiences and explicates crucial issues for teaching Jesus in a way that encourages students at every level to enter into an encounter with the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament without paternalism, parochialism, or prejudice. This volume is a valuable resource for instructors and graduate students interested in an interfaith approach in the classroom, and provides practical case studies for scholars working on Jewish-Christian relations.

Edith Stein's murder at Auschwitz is a topic of intense controversy among members of the Jewish and Catholic faiths. Some observers, both Jews and Christians, insist that Stein was sent to the gas chambers because of her Jewish heritage and faith, and that it would be inappropriate to declare her a saint in the Christian religious tradition. Yet, others of both faiths find in Stein a healing symbol for our time of the atrocities committed against Jews in Christian nations during World War II. In this volume, members of the Jewish and Christian religious traditions speak to this deeply divided debate.

Teaching the Historical Jesus in his Jewish context to students of varied religious backgrounds presents instructors with not only challenges, but also opportunities to sustain interfaith dialogue and foster mutual understanding and respect. This new collection explores these challenges and opportunities, gathering together experiential lessons drawn from teaching Jesus in a wide variety of settings-from the public, secular two- or four-year college, to the Jesuit university, to the Rabbinic school or seminary, to the orthodox, religious Israeli university. A diverse group of Jewish and Christian scholars reflect on their own classroom experiences and explicates crucial issues for teaching Jesus in a way that encourages students at every level to enter into an encounter with the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament without paternalism, parochialism, or prejudice. This volume is a valuable resource for instructors and graduate students interested in an interfaith approach in the classroom, and provides practical case studies for scholars working on Jewish-Christian relations.

The questions posed by the Holocaust force faithful Christians to reexamine their own identities and loyalties in fundamental ways and to recognize the necessity of excising the Church's historic anti-Jewish rhetoric from its confessional core. This volume proposes a new framework of meaning for Christians who want to remain both faithful and critical about a world capable of supporting such evil. The author has rooted his critical perspective in the midrashic framework of Jewish hermeneutics, which requires Christians to come to terms with the significant other in their confessional lives. By bringing biblical texts and the history of the Holocaust face to face, this volume aims at helping Jews and Christians understand their own traditions and one another's.

There is a general understanding within religious and academic circles that the incarnate Christ of Christian belief lived and died a faithful Jew. This volume addresses Jesus in the context of Judaism. By emphasizing his Jewishness, the authors challenge today's Jews to reclaim the Nazarene as a proto-rebel rabbi and invite Christians to discover or rediscover the church's Jewish heritage. The essays in this volume cover historical, literary, liturgical, philosophical, religious, theological, and contemporary issues related to the Jewish Jesus. Several of them were originally presented at a three-day symposium on "Jesus in the Context of Judaism and the Challenge to the Church," hosted by the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University in 2009. In the context of pluralism, in the temper of growing interreligious dialogue, and in the spirit of reconciliation, encountering Jesus as living history for Christians and Jews is both necessary and proper. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the New Testament and early church who are seeking new ways of understanding Jesus in his religious and cultural milieu, as well Jewish and Christian theologians and thinkers who are concerned with contemporary Jewish and Christian relationships.

The Jewish Role in American Life examines the complex relationship between Jews and the United States. Jews have been instrumental in shaping American culture and Jewish culture and religion have likewise been profoundly recast in the United States, especially in the period following World War II.

Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam is the first collection of essays by recognized scholars primarily in the field of religious studies to address this timely topic. In addition to theoretical thinking about both religion and genocide and the relationship between the two, these authors look at the tragedies of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan from their own unique vantage point. In so doing, they supply a much needed additional contribution to the ongoing conversations proffered by historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and legal scholars regarding prevention, intervention, and punishment.

Torah for Today is composed of a series of articles written by Esther Taus for the monthly Temple publication, the Bulletin. Compiled over 22 years of writing, this work deals with the practical application of biblical principles and contemporary concerns. The essays are both informative and challenging. They mediate between the technical world of contemporary religious scholarship and the everyday reality of ethical decisions and piety. The order of presentation of the essays follows the reading program of Reform Judaism, which starts with the High Holy Days (usually in September), and continues for a twelve-month study of the Pentateuch (Bible). Every year different sections of the Bible are studied, and the cycle is repeated. While the book addresses primarily secular readers, people of all faiths and backgrounds are encouraged to discover, or re-discover, the understanding of religions through this extensive analysis of Judaism.

Our Only Hope is based on correspondence between Eddie Weisz, a German Jew who emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, and his family (father, mother, and brother) who remained behind, first in Berlin and then Prague. Like many German Jewish families, Eddie's parents sent their eldest child to America hoping that he could pave the way for the rest of the family to follow. The story is a deeply personal account of how the Nazi phenomenon affected a single family. It gives voice to victims of the Holocaust, people whose experiences are typically told through the eyes of survivors and perpetrators. Through this narrative, Our Only Hope illuminates an ironic and tragic dualism: the steady deterioration of life's circumstances for the Weisz family that is left behind, countered by the transformation of Eddie Weisz into an independent adult and American citizen.

Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, was released on Ash Wednesday, February 24, 2004 to capacity audiences in theatres and auditoriums across the U.S. and other countries. Prior to the film's release, a groundswell of controversy filled the airwaves and media outlets. Some religious groups protested the film, while others embraced it. Mel Gibson focuses on the Passion not the life nor resurrection of Christ. By doing so, he leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story familiar to Christians and consequently he adds non-biblical gruesome details foreign to the Gospels. Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications exposes the flaws of Gibson's cinematic Christ and lays out assertively and persuasively the rationale of Jews and Christians in how to grasp and comprehend the passion and execution of the Christian savior known scripturally as the "King of the Jews."

The "Midrash Group" of the Scholar's Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches has met annually over the last decade to discuss ways for Christians and Jews to find meaning and direction in and from sacred texts after the Holocaust. Post Shoah Dialogues is a sample of four different dialogue sessions of the "Midrash Group." The idea for a Jewish-Christian dialogue on texts grew out of an ongoing conversation between the four scholars represented in this volume, due to the profound affect the Shoah had on the theological thinking of both groups. The essays, focusing on texts matched from Hebrew and Christian scriptures, allow Christians and Jews to read the texts together in such a way as to respect the authentic identity of each other, respect the deep questions arising from the Shoah, and to open avenues for more dialogue.

A companion volume to Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism (UPA, 1987), this book seeks to address the central issues of human life and meaning in the post-Holocaust world. Though representing a variety of disciplines and religious backgrounds, the authors are united by a fundamental recognition that after the Holocaust, the entire enterprise of being human has been called into serious question. Co-published with Studies in Judaism.

This insightful volume represents the "hands-on" experience in the world of academia of two Jewish scholars, one of Orthodox background and the other a convert to the Jewish faith. As a series of separate but interrelated essays, it approaches multiple issues touching both the historical Jesus (himself a pious Jew) and the modern phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. It bridges the gap between the typically isolated disciplines of Jewish and Christian scholarship and forges a fresh level of understanding across religious boundaries. It delves into such issues as the nature and essence of Jesus' message (pietistic, militant or something of a hybrid), and whether Messianic Jews should be welcome in the larger Jewish community. Its ultimate challenge is to view sound scholarship as a means of bringing together disparate faith traditions around a common academic table. Serious research of the "great Nazarene" becomes interfaith discourse.

This insightful volume represents the "hands-on" experience in the world of academia of two Jewish scholars, one of Orthodox background and the other a convert to the Jewish faith. As a series of separate but interrelated essays, it approaches multiple issues touching both the historical Jesus (himself a pious Jew) and the modern phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. It bridges the gap between the typically isolated disciplines of Jewish and Christian scholarship and forges a fresh level of understanding across religious boundaries. It delves into such issues as the nature and essence of Jesus' message (pietistic, militant or something of a hybrid), and whether Messianic Jews should be welcome in the larger Jewish community. Its ultimate challenge is to view sound scholarship as a means of bringing together disparate faith traditions around a common academic table. Serious research of the "great Nazarene" becomes interfaith discourse.