Judaism

Although primogeniture is commonly assumed to have prevailed throughout the world and firstborns are regarded as most likely to achieve success, many of the most prominent figures in biblical literature are younger offspring, including Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, and Solomon.

This cogently argued and richly illustrated book rejects the dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers to argue that the two are one.

The first anthology of Jewish mythology in English, Tree of Souls reveals a mythical tradition as rich and as fascinating as any in the world.

The existence of suffering poses an obvious problem for the monotheistic religions.

Why do some citizens vote while others do not?

The present ecological crisis has created new interest in and criticism of biblical attitudes toward nature.

Between 1391 and the end of the 15th century, numerous Spanish Jews converted to Christianity, most of them under duress.

Traditionally, the Talmud was read as law, that is, as the authoritative source for Jewish practice and obligations.

This is the fourth volume in an influential series that presents a basic revaluation of the nature of mysticism.

Texts about war pervade the Hebrew Bible, raising challenging questions in religious and political ethics.

In this book, Hayes addresses the central concern in talmudic studies over the genesis of halakhic (legal) divergence between the Talmuds produced by the Palestinian rabbinic community (c.

Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles.

The destruction of the Egyptian army in the Book of Exodus is the primary story of salvation for Israel; God is the chief combatant in this story.

Reimagining the Bible collects a dozen essays by Howard Schwartz.

For hundreds of years, Poland served as the epicenter of Jewish life.

This is the study of an anonymous ancient work, usually called Joseph and Aseneth, which narrates the transformation of the daughter of an Egyptian priest into an acceptable spouse for the biblical Joseph, whose marriage to Aseneth is given brief notice in Genesis.

Ronald S.

The Rabbis of the first five centuries of the Common Era loom large in the Jewish tradition.

In the second book of Samuel, the prophet Nathan tells King David that God will give to him and his descendants a great and everlasting kingdom.

One of the most important and complex characters in the Bible, King David has been the subject of innumerable portraits, both artistic and literary.

This book examines the ways in which two distinct biblical conceptions of impurity-"e;ritual"e; and "e;moral"e;-were interpreted in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, and the New Testament.

This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "e;oceanic feeling.

From the days of Plato, the problem of the efficacy and adequacy of the written word as a vehicle of human communication has challenged mankind, yet the mystery of how best to achieve clarity and exactitude of written expression has never been solved.

This book compares a variety of biblical narratives with the stories found in several Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the ancient kingdom of Judah and its contemporary Syro-Palestinian neighbors.

This book is the sequel to Robert Forman's well-received collection, The Problem of Pure Consciousness (Oxford, 1990).

Following on the heels of his critically acclaimed God of Abraham (Oxford, 1996), Lenn E.

Comprising well over a thousand pages of densely written Aramaic, the compilation of texts known as the Zohar represents the collective wisdom of various strands of Jewish mysticism, or kabbalah, up to the thirteenth century.

How has the Jewish family changed over the course of the twentieth century?

Positioned at the boundary of traditional biblical studies, legal history, and literary theory, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation shows how the legislation of Deuteronomy reflects the struggle of its authors to renew late seventh- century Judean society.

Black Zion explores the myriad ways in which African American religions have encountered Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces.

6 Ezra is a short oracular writing that is included in the biblical Apocrypha as the final two chapters (15-16) of Ezra, or 2 Esdras.

This is the sequel to the author's iconoclastic Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics (Oxford, 1992), in which Brichto argues for the aesthetic wholeness of the Hebrew Bible, and the consistency of Scripture's preachment on God, nature, and the human condition--in direct opposition to current source criticism, which maintains that inconsistencies within the text support an atomistic reading of multiple authors.

This volume is the first trilateral exploration of medieval scriptural interpretation.

The existence of ascetic elements within rabbinic Judaism has generally been either overlooked or actually denied.

The anthology is a ubiquitous presence in Jewish literature--arguably its oldest literary genre, going back to the Bible itself, and including nearly all the canonical texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, the Talmud, classical midrash, and the prayerbook.

Bringing together contributions from established scholars as well as promising younger academics, the seventeenth volume of this established series offers a broad-ranging view of why Judaism, a religion whose observance is more honored in the breach in most western Jewish communities, has garnered attention, authority, and controversy in the late twentieth century.

In this book, Harris Lenowitz explores the fascinating history of Jewish messianic movements.

This book deconstructs the boundaries between Jewish and Christian cultures while at the same time redefining what it means to be Jewish in relation to Christianity in the twentieth century.

The newest volume of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry series features essays on the varied and often controversial ways Communism and Jewish history interacted during the 20th century.

Volume XVI in this well-received annual series contains an up-to-date survey of gender issues in modern Judaism.

Bringing together contributions from established scholars from multiple disciplines and countries, Volume XIX of Studies in Contemporary Jewry offers a comparative view of alliances between Jewish communities and the state.

"e;Operation Solomon"e; was one of the most remarkable rescue efforts in modern history, in which more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in little more than a day.

Across the United States, Jews come together every week to sing and pray in a wide variety of worship communities.

When we think of "e;heaven,"e; we generally conjure up positive, blissful images.

Volume XXI of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry marks sixty years since the end of the Second World War and forty years since the Second Vatican Council's efforts to revamp Church relations with the Jewish people and the Jewish faith.

Isolated passages from the writings of Josephus are routinely cited in general studies of early Jewish prophecy, but the present work is the first comprehensive examination of this material.

Bach's St.

Monotheism is usually considered Judaism's greatest contribution to world culture, but it is far from clear what monotheism is.

Joseph Dan is one of the world's leading authorities on Jewish mysticism.

Moses Maimonides (1137/38-1204), scholar, physician, and philosopher, was the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages.