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After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardi Jews such as Isaac Abravanel, Abraham Saba, and Isaac Arama wrote biblical…
commentaries that stressed the significance of land. They interpreted Judaism as a tradition whose best expression and ultimate fulfillment took place away from cities and in rural settings. Iberian-Jewish authors rooted their moral teachings in an ethical treatment of the natural world, elucidating ancient agricultural laws and scrutinizing the physical context and built environments of Bible stories. The Land Is Mine asks what inspired this and suggests that the answer lies not in timeless exegetical or theological trends, but in the material realities of late medieval and early modern Iberia, during a period of drastic changes in land use.The book uses a highly traditional source base in a decidedly untraditional way. In Jewish Studies, Andrew D. Berns observes, biblical commentary is typically studied as an intramural activity. Though scholars have conceded that Jewish scriptural exegesis welcomes material and ideas from other fields and traditions, little to no work treats premodern Hebrew Bible commentary as also drawing upon Classical and Christian sources as well as contemporary writings on land management and political economy. Abravanel, Saba, and Arama were engaged with questions that had broad resonance during their lives: the proper way to treat the land, the best occupations to pursue, and the ideal setting for human community. Scriptural commentary was the forum in which they addressed these problems and posed solutions to them.A work of intellectual history,The Land Is Mine demonstrates that it is impossible to understand Jewish culture without considering the physical realities on which it depended.One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish…
mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century’s linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in – the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion.British Trade Unions, the Labour Party, and Israel’s Histadrut
By Ronnie Fraser. 2022
This book explores the British Labour Party and the trade unions and how their relationship with the Jews of Palestine…
and Israel has evolved over the past one hundred years. It also reflects the changing attitudes of the Labour Party and the unions towards the persecution of the Jews, a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Israel and antisemitism. An in-depth examination of critical events in European and Middle East history reveals the links between British unions and their Israeli union counterpart, the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour), and sets out the circumstances in which the unions went from backing the Labour Party’s 1917 war aims declaration, which called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, through to the present day, which sees the unions promoting campaigns for boycotts and sanctions against the State of Israel.Saving Remnants: Feeling Jewish in America
By Sara Bershtel, Allen Graubard. 1992
Interviews with American Jews of the postwar generation offer an overview of what ethnicity and faith have come to mean,…
and explore the conflict between traditional group loyalties and secular societyNight of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah
By Marcia Falk. 2008
Night of Beginnings is a groundbreaking new haggadah for the Passover seder from acclaimed poet, translator, and liturgist Marcia Falk,…
beautifully designed and illustrated with original watercolor drawings by the author. Unlike both traditional and new haggadahs, which do not contain a full recounting of the biblical story, Night of Beginnings presents the Exodus narrative in its entirety, providing a direct connection to the ancient origins of the holiday. This retelling highlights the actions of its female characters, including Miriam; Pharaoh&’s daughter, who adopts the baby Moshe; and the midwives Shifrah and Pu&’ah, who save the Hebrew male infants. Falk&’s revolutionary new blessings, in Hebrew and English, replace the traditional, patriarchal seder blessings, and her kavanot—meditative directions for prayer—introduce a genre new to the seder ritual. Poems, psalms, and songs are arranged to give structural coherence to the haggadah. A new commentary raises interpretive questions and invites us to bring personal reflections into the discussion. Like the author&’s widely acclaimed previous prayer books, The Book of Blessings and The Days Between, Falk&’s poetic blessings for the seder envision the divine as a Greater Whole of which we are an inseparable part. The inclusive language of Falk's blessings makes room for women to find and use their voices more full-throatedly than they were able to do with the male-centered prayers inherited from the early rabbis. Men, too, will encounter here a spiritually moving and thought-provoking experience.The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature contends that the processes of enlightenment, modernization, and secularization…
in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society were marked not by a reading revolution but rather by a writing revolution, that is, by a revolutionary change in this society's attitude toward writing. Combining socio-cultural history and literary studies and drawing on a large corpus of autobiographies, memoirs, and literary works of the period, the book sets out to explain the curious absence of writing skills and Hebrew grammar from the curriculum of the traditional Jewish education system in Eastern Europe. It shows that traditional Jewish society maintained a conspicuously oral literacy culture, colored by fears of writing and suspicions toward publication. It is against this background that the young yeshiva students undergoing enlightenment started to “sin by writing,” turning writing and publication in Hebrew into the cornerstone of their constitution as autonomous, enlightened, male Jewish subjects, and setting the foundations for the rise of modern Hebrew literature.Judentum für Dummies (Für Dummies)
By Gerhard Langer. 2022
Fasziniert auch Sie die Welt des Judentums? Dieses Buch bietet Ihnen einen Einblick in das Selbstverständnis des jüdischen Volks, seine…
Religion und Lebenspraxis sowie die jüdische Mystik, die Kabbala. Gerhard Langer führt Sie durch drei Jahrtausende spannender Geschichte und klammert dabei auch Verfolgung und Antisemitismus nicht aus. Er erklärt Ihnen die Gebräuche und Feste, die Symbole, Riten und Gebote und deren Bedeutung. Erfahren Sie, warum das Lernen für Juden so wichtig ist, warum der Staat Israel eine besondere Bedeutung hat und lernen Sie den typisch jüdischen Humor kennen!Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors
By Margaretha Folmer. 2022
The Judean community at Elephantine has long fascinated historians of the Persian period. This book, with its stellar assemblage of…
important scholarly voices, provides substantive new insights and approaches that will advance the study of this well-known but not entirely understood community from fifth-century BCE Egypt. Since Bezalel Porten’s pioneering Archives from Elephantine, published in 1968, the discourse on the subject of the community of Elephantine during the Persian period has changed considerably, due to new data from excavations, the discovery and publication of previously unknown texts, and original scholarly insights and avenues of inquiry. Running the gamut from archaeological to linguistic investigations and encompassing legal, literary, religious, and other aspects of life in this Judean community, this volume stands at a crossroads of research that extends from Hebrew Bible studies to the history of early Jewish communities. It also features fourteen new Aramaic ostraca from Aswan. The volume will appeal to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism, as well as to a wider audience of Egyptologists, Semitists, and specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Annalisa Azzoni, Bob Becking, Alejandro F. Botta, Lester L. Grabbe, Ingo Kottsieper, Reinhard G. Kratz, André Lemaire, Hélène Nutkowicz, Beatrice von Pilgrim, Cornelius von Pilgrim, Bezalel Porten, Ada Yardeni, and Ran Zadok. Moreover, a video recording of an interview conducted with Porten on his long career in Elephantine studies accompanies the book through a link on the Eisenbrauns website.The Jung-Kirsch Letters: The Correspondence of C.G. Jung and James Kirsch
By Ann Conrad Lammers. 2016
This book charts Carl Gustav Jung’s 33-year (1928-61) correspondence with James Kirsch, adding depth and complexity to the previously published…
record of the early Jungian movement. Kirsch was a German-Jewish psychiatrist, a first-generation follower of Jung, who founded Jungian communities in Berlin, Tel Aviv, London, and Los Angeles. Their letters tell of heroic survival, brilliant creativity, and the building of generative institutions, but these themes are darkened by personal and collective shadows. The Nazi era looms over the first half of the book, shaping the story in ways that were fateful not only for Kirsch and his career but also for Jung and his. Kirsch trained with Jung and acted as a tutor in Jewish psychology and culture to him. In 1934, fearing that anti-Semitism had seized his teacher, Kirsch challenged Jung to explain some of his publications for the Nazi-dominated Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Jung’s answer convinced Kirsch of his sincerity, and from then on Kirsch defended him fiercely against any allegation of anti-Semitism. We also witness Kirsch’s lifelong struggle with states of archetypal possession: his identification with the interior God-image on the one hand, and with unconscious feminine aspects of his psyche on the other. These complexes were expressed, for Kirsch, in physical symptoms and emotional dilemmas, and they led him into clinical boundary violations which were costly to his analysands, his family and himself. The text of these historical documents is translated with great attention to style and accuracy, and generous editorial scaffolding gives glimpses into the writers’ world. Four appendices are included: two essays by Kirsch, a series of letters between Hilde Kirsch and Jung, and a brief, incisive essay on the Medical Society for Psychotherapy. This revised edition includes primary material that was unavailable when the book was first published, as well as updated footnotes and minor corrections to the translated letters.The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus
By Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. 2022
A masterly analysis of the Book of Leviticus, the newest volume in the award-winning series of commentaries on the Hebrew…
Bible by &“a celebrated biblical scholar, keen on weaving together traditional Jewish exegesis, psychoanalysis, and postmodern criticism&” (The New York Times Book Review)The image of the Golden Calf haunts the commentaries that thread through Leviticus. This catastrophic episode, in which the Israelites (freed from Egyptian slavery and forty days after their momentous encounter with God at Mount Sinai) worship a pagan idol while Moses is receiving the Torah from God on the mountaintop, gives the mostly legalistic text a unique depth and resonance. According to midrashic tradition, the post-traumatic effects of the sin of the Golden Calf linger through the generations, the sin to be &“paid off&” in small increments through time. Post-biblical perspectives view this as the diffusion of punishment, as well as a way of addressing the on-going phenomenon of idolatry itself. These after-effects of the Golden Calf incident are imaginatively explored in Avivah Zornberg&’s magnificent textual analysis. She brings the rabbis of the Talmud, medieval commentators, Hasidic scholars, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and literary masters—from Aristotle and Rashi to the Baal Shem Tov, Franz Rosenzweig, Sigmund Freud, and George Eliot—into her pathbreaking discussion of the nature of reward and punishment, good and evil, Eros and Thanatos, and humankind&’s intricate and ever-fascinating encounter with the divine.Who By Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen
By Matti Friedman. 2022
The incredible never-before-told story of Leonard Cohen's 1973 tour of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. "Who by Fire is…
a stunning resurrection of a moment in the life of Leonard Cohen and the history of Israel. It&’s the story of a young artist in crisis and a young country at war, and the powerful resonance of the chord struck between them. A beautiful, haunting book full of feeling." —Nicole Krauss, author of To Be a Man In October, 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen – 39 years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end – traveled to the Sinai desert and inserted himself into the chaos and bloodshed of the Yom Kippur War. Moving around the front with a guitar and a pick-up team of local musicians, Cohen dived headlong into the midst of a global crisis and met hundreds of fighting men and women at the worst moment of their lives. His audiences heard him knowing it might be the last thing they heard, and those who survived never forgot what they heard. Cohen&’s war tour was an electric cultural moment, one that still echoes today, and one that inspired some of his greatest songs – but a moment that only few knew about, until now. In Who By Fire, Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of what happened during those weeks in Israel in October, 1973. With access to amazing and never-before-seen material written by Cohen himself, along with dozens of interviews and rare photographs, Friedman revives this fraught and stunning time, presenting an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the artist, and of the young people who heard him sing in the midst of combat. Who By Fire brings us close to one the greatest, most brilliant and charismatic voices of our times, and gives us a rare glimpse of war, faith, and belonging.Judaism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust: Making the Connections
By David Patterson. 2022
In this book, David Patterson offers original insights into the dynamics that underlie the phenomenon of endemic antisemitism, arguing that…
in all its manifestations, antisemitism is fundamentally anti-Judaism. Structured in a unique matrix of chapters that are linked historically and theoretically, his book elucidates the interconnections that tie antisemitism with the Holocaust, as well as the Judaism that the Nazis sought to obliterate from the world. As Patterson demonstrates this is an ongoing effort and is the basis of today's antisemitism. Spelling out the historical, theological, and philosophical viewpoints that led to the Holocaust and that are with us even now, he offers insights into the basis of the hatred of Jews that permeates much of today's world. Patterson here addresses the 'big questions' that define our humanity. His volume is written for those who wish to have a deeper understanding of both the history and the current manifestations of Antisemitism.Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought (JPS Anthologies of Jewish Thought)
By Geoffrey D. Claussen. 2022
How do modern Jews understand virtues such as courage, humility, justice, solidarity, or love? In truth: they have fiercely debated…
how to interpret them. This groundbreaking anthology of musar (Jewish traditions regarding virtue and character) explores the diverse ways seventy-eight modern Jewish thinkers understand ten virtues: honesty and love of truth; curiosity and inquisitiveness; humility; courage and valor; temperance and self-restraint; gratitude; forgiveness; love, kindness, and compassion; solidarity and social responsibility; and justice and righteousness. These thinkers—from the Musar movement to Hasidism to contemporary Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanist, and secular Jews—often agree on the importance of these virtues but fundamentally disagree in their conclusions. The juxtaposition of their views, complemented by Geoffrey Claussen&’s pointed analysis, allows us to see tensions with particular clarity—and sometimes to recognize multiple compelling ways of viewing the same virtue. By expanding the category of musar literature to include not only classic texts and traditional works influenced by them but also the writings of diverse rabbis, scholars, and activists—men and women—who continue to shape Jewish tradition, Modern Musar challenges the fields of modern Jewish thought and ethics to rethink their boundaries—and invites us to weigh and refine our own moral ideals.God Is Here: Reimagining the Divine
By Toba Spitzer. 2022
Toba Spitzer's God Is Here is a transformative exploration of the idea of God, offering new paths to experiencing the…
realm of the sacred.Most of us are hungry for a system of meaning to make sense of our lives, yet traditional religion too often leaves those seeking spiritual sustenance unsatisfied. Rabbi Toba Spitzer understands this problem firsthand, and knows that too often it is traditional ideas of the deity—he's too big, too impersonal, and too unbelievable—that get in the way. In God Is Here, Spitzer argues that whether we believe in God or fervently disbelieve, what we are actually disagreeing about is not God at all, but a metaphor of a Big Powerful Person that limits our understanding and our spiritual lives.Going back to the earliest sources for Judaism as well as Christianity, Spitzer discovers in the Hebrew Bible a rich and varied palette of metaphors for the divine—including Water, Voice, Fire, Rock, Cloud, and even the process of Becoming. She addresses how we can access these ancient metaphors, as well as those drawn from rabbinic tradition and modern science, to experience holiness in our daily lives and to guide us in challenging times. In the section on water, for instance, she looks at the myriad ways water flows through the Biblical stories of the Israelites and emerges as a powerful metaphor for the divine in the Prophets and Psalms. She invites us to explore what it might mean to “drink from God,” or to experience godly justice as something that “rains down” and “flows like a river.”Each chapter contains insights from the Bible and teachings from Judaism and other spiritual traditions, accompanied by suggestions for practice to bring alive each of the God metaphors. Rabbi Toba Spitzer has helped many people satisfy their spiritual hunger. With God Is Here she will inspire you to find new and perhaps surprising ways of encountering the divine, right where you are.The Telling Workbook: An Interactive Guide to the Haggadah
By Mark Gerson. 2022
Transform your understanding of the HaggadahIn the national bestseller The Telling, author Mark Gerson changed the way thousands of people…
think about the Haggadah and approach the Passover Seder. Now Gerson invites readers to go even further and explore the Haggadah in an interactive new way. The Telling Workbook will help readers dig into the rich teachings of the Haggadah, with reflections and questions designed to spark discussion with friends and family and deepen their insight into the meaning of the Passover Seder and the timeless book at its core. With The Telling Workbook as a guide, readers will be equipped to transform their yearly Passover Seder from a well-loved tradition into a powerful celebration of heritage and an inspiring act of faith that echoes throughout the year.The Medieval Postcolonial Jew, In and Out of Time
By Miriamne Ara Krummel. 2022
The Medieval Postcolonial Jew, In and Out of Time studies violent temporal clashes that are written into the medieval vision…
of annus domini [the year of our Lord]. Christian temporality represents Jewish time as queerly oddly outmoded and advocating uncivil and socially disruptive behavior. Jewish temporality, in turn, records a marginalized people who work to rescue their embattled temporality from becoming a time forgotten and colonized. Through a select group of literature in Middle English, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as sixteen manuscript pictorials, author Miriamne Ara Krummel confronts the notion that annus domini time (whether disguised as CE or AD) figures as the universal standard. Krummel’s argument details how Other temporalities—ones outside and not like annus domini time—are cast as nonstandard and imagined as wholly devised out of stories that promote fear and terror, and are positioned as putative threats to the fabric of the temporal empire of Latin Christendom. Ultimately, the book reflects on the ways in which “common” time both marks and silences marginal identities and cultures and shows to what extent the dynamics of the medieval environment materialize in our modern world.The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature (Jews in Eastern Europe)
By Marina Zilbergerts. 2022
The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature argues that the institution of the yeshiva and its ideals of…
Jewish textual study played a seminal role in the resurgence of Hebrew literature in modern times. Departing from the conventional interpretation of the origins of Hebrew literature in secular culture, Marina Zilbergerts points to the practices and metaphysics of Talmud study as its essential animating forces. Focusing on the early works and personal histories of founding figures of Hebrew literature, from Moshe Leib Lilienblum to Chaim Nachman Bialik, The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature reveals the lasting engagement of modern Jewish letters with the hallowed tradition of rabbinic learning.Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature
By Max K. Strassfeld. 2022
Trans Talmud places eunuchs and androgynes at the center of rabbinic literature and asks what we can learn from them…
about Judaism and the project of transgender history. Rather than treating these figures as anomalies to be justified or explained away, Max K. Strassfeld argues that they profoundly shaped ideas about law, as the rabbis constructed intricate taxonomies of gender across dozens of texts to understand an array of cultural tensions. Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity, Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it. Trans Talmud challenges how we understand gender in Judaism and demonstrates that acknowledging nonbinary gender prompts a reassessment of Jewish literature and law.El Evangelio Mesiánico de los Hebreos
By Aaron Miller. 2022
De todos los Evangelios apócrifos, todos fueron refutados en gran medida por los Padres de la Iglesia. Sin embargo, entre…
todos ellos destacó un texto cuya autoridad fue considerada -incluso por Orígenes y Jerónimo-: el Evangelio de los Hebreos. Según ellos, un grupo cristiano primitivo llamado los nazoreanos, o "naziritas" (no los posteriores notzrim), que estaban ligados a sus orígenes hebreos, lo tenían con alto honor, ya que estaba escrito en hebreo o arameo con letras hebreas. Algunos pensaron que era el mismo que el llamado Evangelio hebreo de Mateo, ya que el texto mismo, dicen, fue escrito por él. En los estudios en profundidad de Aaron Miller, ha descubierto la posibilidad de que también fuera la "Fuente Q" perdida, de la que se dice que es una fuente de la que tomaron prestados en gran medida los Evangelios de Mateo y Lucas. Dado que fue escrito originalmente en hebreo y apreciado por los primeros creyentes mesiánicos, está traducido según los nombres hebreos originales (aunque con las vocales griegas, ya que esas eran las vocales que usaban los hebreos en aquella época), así como los términos hebreos para el creyente mesiánico.Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus
By Jodi Magness. 2011
In Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit Jodi Magness unearths “footprints” buried in both archaeological and literary evidence to shed…
new light on Jewish daily life in Palestine from the mid-first century b.c.e. to 70 c.e. — the time and place of Jesus’ life and ministry. Magness analyzes recent archaeological discoveries from such sites as Qumran and Masada together with a host of period texts, including the New Testament, the works of Josephus, and rabbinic teachings. Layering all these sources together, she reconstructs in detail a fascinating variety of everyday activities — dining customs, Sabbath observance, fasting, toilet habits, burial customs, and more.