This book explores Martin Luther's attitudes towards Jews and Judaism, considering his approach in the historical, religious, theological, and cultural context of late Middle Ages Europe.
A revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to assert the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certaintyIn 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand.
A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of documentationThe lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909-1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews.
The life and many afterlives of one of the most enduring mystical testaments ever writtenThe Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine.
Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering.
On 8 March 1941, a 27-year-old Jewish Dutch student living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam made the first entry in a diary that was to become one of the most remarkable documents to emerge from the Nazi Holocaust.
The life and times of this iconic and enduring biblical bookThe Book of Job raises stark questions about the nature and meaning of innocent suffering and the relationship of the human to the divine, yet it is also one of the Bible's most obscure and paradoxical books, one that defies interpretation even today.
The life and times of an enduring work of Jewish spiritualityThe Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller.
Random Destinations examines how novels and short stories portray those who managed to escape from Central Europe in the 1930s following the rise of Nazism.
Combining cultural history and literary analysis, this study proposes a new and thought-provoking reading of the changing relationship between Germans and Jews following the Holocaust.
This book analyzes major transformations in Jewish life and thought: from idolatry to exclusive monotheism in the biblical age, from state-based identity to cultural nationalism in the Roman empire; and, in the European Diaspora, from theology to secularism and revived political nationalism in the modern period.
A collection of new, scholarly articles on the Jewish Workers' Bund - the first modern Jewish political party in Eastern Europe - written by prominent academics from eight countries.
A sweeping history of Judaism over more than three millenniaJudaism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and it has preserved its distinctive identity despite the extraordinarily diverse forms and beliefs it has embodied over the course of more than three millennia.
A pathbreaking history of Sufism, from the earliest centuries of Islam to the presentAfter centuries as the most important ascetic-mystical strand of Islam, Sufism saw a sharp decline in the twentieth century, only to experience a stunning revival in recent decades.
Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men.
A unique history of the Hebrew language from biblical times to the modern Jewish stateThis book explores the extraordinary hold that Hebrew has had on Jews and Christians, who have invested it with a symbolic power far beyond that of any other language in history.
A global journey showing how philosophy can transform our biggest disagreementsTeaching Plato in Palestine is part intellectual travelogue, part plea for integrating philosophy into our personal and public life.
A comprehensive and accessible guide to the Hebrew BibleThis book brings together some of the world's most exciting scholars from across a variety of disciplines to provide a concise and accessible guide to the Hebrew Bible.
A deeply personal look at death, mourning, and the afterlife in Jewish traditionAfter One-Hundred-and-Twenty provides a richly nuanced and deeply personal look at Jewish attitudes and practices regarding death, mourning, and the afterlife as they have existed and evolved from biblical times to today.
Hasidism, a controversial, mystical-religious movement of Eastern European origin, has posed a serious challenge to mainstream Judaism from its earliest beginnings in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Biblical in origin, the expression "e;eclipse of God"e; refers to the Jewish concept of hester panim, the act of God concealing his face as a way of punishing his disobedient subjects.
What Jewish tradition can teach us about human dignity in a scientific ageThis book explores one of the great questions of our time: How can we preserve our sense of what it means to be a person while at the same time accepting what science tells us to be true-namely, that human nature is continuous with the rest of nature?
From the first centuries of Islam to well into the Middle Ages, Jews and Christians produced hundreds of manuscripts containing portions of the Bible in Arabic.
A comprehensive and accessible account of the life and thought of Judaism's most celebrated philosopherMaimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness.
The life and times of this iconic and enduring biblical bookThe Book of Job raises stark questions about the nature and meaning of innocent suffering and the relationship of the human to the divine, yet it is also one of the Bible's most obscure and paradoxical books, one that defies interpretation even today.
How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchantsIn 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia.
How the rise of Christianity profoundly influenced the development of Judaism in late antiquityIn late antiquity, as Christianity emerged from Judaism, it was not only the new religion that was being influenced by the old.
How Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have reimagined Abraham in their own imagesJews, Christians, and Muslims supposedly share a common religious heritage in the patriarch Abraham, and the idea that he should serve only as a source of unity among the three traditions has become widespread in both scholarly and popular circles.
A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth centuryIs Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality-or a mixture of all of these?
A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth centuryIs Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality-or a mixture of all of these?
