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 ...

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 ...