Emphasizes the role of history in shaping Yugoslav Jewish identity.

A clear and penetrating account of the basis of Hasidic mysticism. Includes translations of many texts never before available in English.

Explores central questions in the history and theory of Jewish ethics, namely, the relationship between ethics and law, the relationship between ethics and theology, and the problems and prospects for constructing a contemporary Jewish ethic.

A rigorous analysis of Maimonides' and Nahmanides' explanations of the Mosaic commandments that challenges received notions of the relation between these two seminal thinkers.

Considers the tales of Reb Nahman of Bratslav within a broad cultural milieu, including the romanticism of Reb Nahman's time, contemporary feminist hermeneutics, and the fantastic in various contexts.

Explores the literary, philosophical, and cultural implications of Cabala during the Renaissance.

Illustrates how and why Jewish denominational preferences are more a matter of individual choice than family heritage.

A collection of essays focusing on myth in Judaism from biblical to modern times, this book offers a sense of the great diversity of the Jewish religion.

Identifies and examines the central insights of Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas concerning the religious dimensions of the relationships between persons and extends these insights in order to explore the relevance of religious language to speak of post-Holocaust Jewish life, the critique of the tradition by feminist Jewish philosophers and theologians, and the challenges of religious pluralism.

Explores the impact on Jews and Judaism of the crisis of modernity, analyzing modern Jewish dilemmas and providing a prescription for their resolution.

This is a translation from the Italian of a study of the work of Hermann Cohen, a figure generally recognized as the most significant Jewish thinker of the past 100 years.

Analyzes the future of urban communities and presents models for community planning, taking into account different classes, ethnicities, and cultures.

Based on the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, this book analyzes gender equality in education, labor force participation, and occupational achievement among American Jews, and offers a comparison with the wider American population and Israeli Jews.

Presents a new view of the Taoist classic, The Chuang Tzu, through the lens of Buber’s translation and his philosophy developed in I and Thou and later works.

Shows to what extent and in what fashion Jews are bound to accept the opinions and the pronouncements of religious authorities.

Shows that for Maimonides (medieval Jewish philosopher) prayer as a pure act of worship is essential.

This book includes contemporary Jewish political practice, and both systematic and historical treatments of issues in Jewish political theory and legal thought.

This book explores the fundamental issues in Jewish mysticism and provides a taxonomy of the deep structures of thought that emerge from the texts.

This book relates the various strata of Halevi's Book of Kuzari to the different periods of Halevi's philosophical development.

This is a careful examination of the doctrine of Jewish chosenness in the light of Gersonides's thought on providential suffering and on inherited providence. Gersonides is one of the most interesting and important philosophers of the later Jewish Middle Ages.

A collection of essays that examines the culture, politics, and social structure of Hasidic Jewish life.

This book is a study of rabbinic legal interpretation (midrash) in Judaism's rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods. It shows how the rise of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism in the modern period ...

This book stands at the crossroads between Jerusalem and Benares and opens a long awaited conversation between two ancient religious traditions. It represents the first serious attempt by a group of eminent ...

Combining biography and a careful analysis of Nietzsche's writings from 1844-1900, this book explores Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, Judaism, and antisemitism. The first part of the book is concerned ...

Moses Mendelssohn, the author of numerous works on natural theology and ethics, was also the first modern philosopher of Judaism. This book places Mendelssohn's thought within the context of the Leibnizian-Wolffian ...

In the early part of the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) founded the academic discipline of the study of Jewish Mysticism. In so doing, he not only broke new scholarly ground; but he also ...

The first book to deal with the Jewish thought of Leo Strauss.

This book analyzes the use of symbolism and theurgy in two sections of the Zohar, the central text of the kabbalah. These compositions, Tiqqunei ha-Zohar and Ra'aya Meheimna have been particularly loved ...

Philosphical speculations on chosenness and ritual in Judaism.

This comprehensive history, the first to appear in English, gives a vivid portrayal of the Book of Esther's role in the intellectual and cultural life of Jews in the Middle Ages. Much of the study is ...

This is the first comprehensive philosophical-theological study of the mystical thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the Chief Rabbi of Palestine prior to the establishment of the state of ...

This book explores the variety of ways that the Jewish understanding of the Covenant relates to the notion of a contract or a shared grammar as developed in recent structural and post-structural theory. ...

This innovative and original book examines the broad range of Jewish interpretation from antiquity through the medieval and renaissance periods. Its primary focus is on Midrash and midrashic creativity, ...

This book traces one exegetical, interpretative principal, divine accommodation, in Jewish and Christian thought from the first to the nineteenth century. The focus is upon major figures and the place ...

This book contains the most recent research in the intrinsically interdisciplinary field of Sephardic Studies. It provides new insights into Sephardic history, culture, folklore, languages, music, and ...

This book scrutinizes the interrelationships between Jewish spatial organization and social structure and change in Palestine/Israel. Kellerman analyzes the development of nationwide and regional settlements, ...

This book is a study of the Habad Hasidism movement, an influential part of the Hasidic Movement, which originated in the eigteenth century. Habad was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1813) ...

During a time of rapid change in the American Jewish community, an outstanding group of Jewish scholars and professionals address the critical problems and future prospects of American Jewry. They discuss ...

This book represents the first wide-scale presentation and interpretation of pre-kabbalistic, Jewish mysticism. This is the Hekhalot or Merkavah mysticism. The emphasis is on the conceptions of God, the ...

This volume brings together leading philosophers of Judaism on the issue of autonomy in the Jewish tradition. Addressing themselves to the relationship of the individual Jew to the Jewish community and ...

Finkelstein examines a wide range of recent Jewish writing, including poetry, fiction, and literary criticism, in order to determine the changes such writing has undergone in its exposure to modern and ...

During the fourteenth century, there was a general demoralization in the Jewish community in Spain. Many Jews were on the brink of conversion. Rabbi Crescas met the Christian challenge by writing this ...

This book focuses on the Iberian Jews and conversos, Jews who converted to Christianity. It explores the idea of the "other" in both Jewish and Christian traditions, the differences between the perspectives ...

The earliest medieval Jewish mystical writings, or kabbalah, date from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This is the first book to focus on the most prodigious group active at that time—the ...

Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People explores Maimonides' philosophical psychology, his ethics, his views on prophecy, providence, and immortality, his understanding of the place of gentiles in ...

This innovative study of the modern Hebrew writer, S. Y. Agnon, offers new insight into his literary transformations of Jewish themes and sources. With particular attention to Kafka, Hoffman situates ...

Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Politics, and Culture is the second volume in a series devoted to imaginative and critical consideration of recent books on Israel. It is a forum allowing some of the ...

This book examines Torah and its interpretation both as a recurring theme in the early rabbinic commentary and as the very practice of the commentary. It studies the phenomenon of ancient rabbinic scriptural ...

It is a work of sound scholarship dealing with an interesting historical figure and his unique cultural world. The author focuses correctly on the transition from Italian to Ottoman Jewish culture in ...

Uriel Simon describes the fascinating controversy that raged from the tenth to the twelfth centuries regarding the theological status and literary genre of the Psalms. Saadiah Gaon, who initiated the ...

Scholars have long pointed to the great affinity between stories found in the Bible and the Qur'an, yet no explanation has been proposed that satisfactorily explains the odd combination of incredible ...

Cohen takes an in-depth critical look at three novelists and two poets who stand at the forefront of contemporary Israeli literature, and whose works have been widely read, studied, and admired in the ...

This book is a pioneering study of Yiddish and Polish-Jewish concentration camp and ghetto poetry. It reveals the impact of the immediacy of experience as a formative influence on perception, response, ...

This is the first full-length, systematic study in English of Isaac Breuer, a founder of Agudat Israel, whose intellectual achievements reflected the world of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber in an Orthodox ...

This is an original, philosophical discussion in which André Neher relates the lives of prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jews to traditional Jewish thought on issues of assimilation, the Holocaust, ...

Steven Schwarzschild—rabbi, socialist, pacifist, theologian, and philosopher—is both the last of the major medieval Jewish philosophers and the most modern. He is in the tradition of the Jewish thinking ...

Weingrod presents an anthropological study of the development of a new Jewish saint, or zaddikin Israel and of the annual pilgrimage to his enshrined grave by thousands of North African Jews. It is the ...

Frieden explores methods of dream interpretation in the Bible, the Talmud, and in the writings of Sigmund Freud, and brings to light Freud's troubled relationship to his Judaic forerunners. This book ...

Clearly written, historically sophisticated, Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age presents a running dialogue between a rationalist understanding of religion and its many critics, ranging from Descartes ...

This book provides a thorough and detailed examination of Israeli institutions and how they function. It explains the decline in effectiveness of the government and the spread of cultural malaise in the ...

This is a developmental study of men in mandatory military service based on indepth interviews of young soldiers who had recently completed their service in Israel. The book deals with the central issues ...

Yehuda Amichai is an Israeli poet of international distinction. Known as Israel's "master poet," Amichai conveys a portrait of life in modern Israel, summarizing and reflecting all the major preoccupations ...

This book deals with nineteenth century American-Jewish perceptions of Christianity and Jesus. While its concern is the centuries-old argument between Christians and Jews, it focuses on the American setting of that argument and shows how American condi

The book is divided into three sections. The first provides a general historical overview for the Jewish thought that follows. The second summarizes the variety of basic kinds of popular, positive Jewish ...

This study examines the critical ideologies that have shaped the perception, reception, and projection of Old Yiddish during the course of the past century. The first critical, historical survey of the ...

This book provides a unique mosaic of the most recent processes and phenomena which explains Israel factually as well as theoretically. It offers a new conceptual framework for analysing the relationships ...

The author provides an interpretation of the words of Jews living during the intertestamental period and through the third century, including several hassidim. A hermeneutics grounded in the perception ...

Examines street demonstrations from 1980 through 1984.

Using a variety of anthropological approaches, the authors illustrate how the Jewish identity has persisted in the United States despite great subcultural variation and a wide range of adaptations. Within ...

This book presents important topics regarding the more mystical trend of Kabbalah—the ecstatic Kabbalah. It includes the mystical union, the world of imagination, and concentration as a spiritual technique. ...

This book represents the first English translation of Maaseh Merkabah, which is part of a body of early Jewish mystical texts known as palace (hekhalot) or chariot (merkabah) texts. Through a complex ...

This is a systematic philosophy of politics and the state. As few contemporary books do, Order and Might provides a general theory, exploring the structure of socio-political experience. It not only addresses ...

When Jews and Christians Meet captures the present state of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue, in which it is taken for granted that good will has been established and that Christians and Jews have a great ...

Suicide is always a controversial issue. Among Jews, it is often taboo. Stereotypically, Jews do not commit suicide; certainly, they do not discuss it. Passionate Women, Passive Men: Suicide in Yiddish ...

This book examines biblical and rabbinic law as a coherent, continuing legal tradition. It explains the relationship between religion and law and the interaction between law and morality. Abundant selections ...

The first wide-scale presentation of a major Jewish mystic, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah.

Spinoza and Moral Freedom guides the reader through Spinoza's principal ideas and powerful lines of reasoning, clearing up obscurities along the way, while acknowledging the genuine difficulties and gaps. ...

This is the first study to examine the career of one of the most prominent American Zionists. Intellectually brilliant, socially and religiously committed, Judah Magnes was an inspiring speaker, reformer, ...

Judaism Viewed from Within and from Without presents three themes. The first applies anthropological analyses to classic textual material in Judaism, the second presents studies of different expressions ...

This book explores a central phenomenon in the development of modern Jewish literature: the retelling of tradtional Jewish narratives by twentieth-century writers. It shows how and toward what ends Biblical stories, legends, and Hasidic tales have been used in shaping modern Hebrew literature.

Here three gerontological professionals have combined their diverse backgrounds in a timely and urgently needed study of how religious institutions interact with their communities to provide care for ...

This book presents a new and original analysis of the great ancient civilizations, focusing on the breakthroughs and their institutionalization in Greece, Israel, China, and India. The conditions under ...

Focusing on the rich context of esoteric Jerish literature, this collection presents in-depth analyses of Jewish-American poetry. Gitenstein defines Jewish messianism and the literary genre of the apocalyptic, ...

An introduction to the ethical and ontological import of Levinas’ philosophy.

During the last 25 years of his life, Heinrich Heine lived in Paris for the most part, and there he contributed to the Revue de Deux Mondes a series of prose articles on the religious and political history ...

Explores how Jewish American writers have grappled with the enormity of the Holocaust.

This is an elegant book. By skillfully blending meticulous scholarship with points of genuine human interest, Donald Berry gives fresh insight into Martin Buber's vision of mutuality. Berry focuses on ...

New Jewish Voices presents the first anthology of modern Jewish-American drama. These highly acclaimed plays, previously produced by New York City's nationally-renowned Jewish Repertory Theatre, offer ...

Motivated by moral outrage, a small number of individuals in America today is vigorously protesting the presence here of accused Nazi war criminals and collaborators. The Outraged Conscience documents ...

In its determination to take absolute control, the Third Reich focused on the nation's youth, reserving for the schools the vital task of refashioning the German psyche. This book examines these propaganda ...

A founding father of modern Israel, Ahad Ha-am (1856-1927) was one of the shapers of the contemporary Zionist consciousness. His career spanned the era of Russian Jewry's nationalist awakening. During ...

While the massive flow of immigrants to the Northeast was taking place, a number of Jews were finding their way to America through the port of Galveston, Texas. The descendants of these immigrants, now ...

Now available for the first time to the English-speaking public, the captivating short stories of master storyteller Meir Blinkin are the charming prose equivalents of the film Hester Street. These delightful ...

The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class explains how European Jews of diverse cultural and social backgrounds coalesced over four generations into a middle-class community. By utilizing numerous oral histories ...

In this groundbreaking study, Susan Handelman examines the theological roots of the modern science of interpretation. She defines current structures of thought and patterns of organizing reality, clearly ...

B'nai B'rith has a history almost as diverse as the story of American Jewry itself. The oldest secular Jewish organization in the United States, it was founded in 1843. Thereafter, it followed in the ...

Derived from the Arabic word for "lie," the word "chizbat" was chosen by members of the Palmah to designate the particular form of narrative joke exchanged by these volunteer defenders of Jewish settlements ...

In the first half of this century, a talented and charismatic leadership restructured the American Jewish community to meet the demands and opportunities of a pluralistic, secular society. The work of ...