You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This volume is a first attempt to bring scholars and rabbis to create a dialogue around the question of how religious belief in the divine revelation at Sinai can be combined with critical Bible study. The volume contains twenty-one essays by contemporary Jewish academics and thinkers on the relationship between faith and the source-critical study of the Bible.
This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the emergence of the new biblical culture. It describes the circumstances and processes that turned Holy Scripture into the Book of Books and into the history of the biblical period and of the people - the Jewish people. It deals with the encounter of the Jews with modern biblical criticism and the archaeological research of the Ancient Near East and with contemporary archaeology. The middle section discusses the extensive involvement of educated Jews in the Bible-Babel polemic at the start of the twentieth century, which it treats as a typological event. The last section describes at length various aspects of the key status assigned to the Bible in the new Jewish culture in Europe, and particularly in modern Jewish Palestine, as a "guide to life" in education, culture and politics, as well as part of the attempt to create a new Jewish man, and as a source of inspiration for various creative arts.
This volume explores an underappreciated feature of the standard Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew, namely its composite nature. Focusing on cases of dissonance between the tradition’s written (consonantal) and reading (vocalic) components, the study shows that the Tiberian spelling and pronunciation traditions, though related, interdependent, and largely in harmony, at numerous points reflect distinct oral realisations of the biblical text. Where the extant vocalisation differs from the apparently pre-exilic pronunciation presupposed by the written tradition, the former often exhibits conspicuous affinity with post-exilic linguistic conventions as seen in representative Seco...
This book re-thinks the relationship between the world of the traditional Jewish study hall (the Beit Midrash) and the academy: Can these two institutions overcome their vast differences? Should they attempt to do so? If not, what could two methods of study seen as diametrically opposed possibly learn from one another? How might they help each other reconceive their interrelationship, themselves, and the broader study of Jews and Judaism? This book begins with three distinct approaches to these challenges. The chapters then follow the approaches through an interdisciplinary series of pioneering case studies that reassess a range of topics including religion and pluralism in Jewish education;...
King Manasseh of Judah is one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible. 2 Kings presents him as the wickedest of monarchs. In 2Kgs 24:3–4, he is accused of having provoked God to destroy Judah on account of the innocent blood he had shed in Jerusalem (cf. 2Kgs 21:16). In his study Krzysztof Kinowski investigates this accusation, viewing it against the biblical and ancient Near East backgrounds, and casts a new light upon Manasseh's role in the fall of Jerusalem. The mention of bloodshed in this affair appears to be the outcome of a process of scapegoating of Manasseh, ongoing in 2 Kings and reflecting both the legal and the cultic paradigms governing the biblical historiography. The link between Manasseh's bloodshed and the destruction of Judah on account of the cultic land's blood-defilement points towards a group of priestly scribes involved in the production of the 2Kgs 21 and 24 narratives. This assumption lies behind the scholarly discussion about the Priestly-like strata and priestly touches in the Books of Kings.
Another Modernity is a rich study of the life and thought of Elia Benamozegh, a nineteenth-century rabbi and philosopher whose work profoundly influenced Christian-Jewish dialogue in twentieth-century Europe. Benamozegh, a Livornese rabbi of Moroccan descent, was a prolific writer and transnational thinker who corresponded widely with religious and intellectual figures in France, the Maghreb, and the Middle East. This idiosyncratic figure, who argued for the universalism of Judaism and for interreligious engagement, came to influence a spectrum of religious thinkers so varied that it includes proponents of the ecumenical Second Vatican Council, American evangelists, and right-wing Zionists i...
The moving story of Joana Halevi - one brave woman who was willing to give up the most precious things in her life to maintain her faith. Spain, 1391. Joana, wife of Shlomo Halevi, the Rabbi of Burgos, mother of five, and daughter of a wealthy and respectable family, is living a comfortable, carefree life. Until her world is shattered without warning one summer day. While her husband Shlomo, now Pablo de Santamaria, joins the Catholic church and takes their family with him, Joana struggles with the unrelenting yearning for her children. Will her soul find relief? Will her children return to her side? Jerusalem, 2020. Ruth is struggling with personal conflicts when the Covid-19 pandemic shakes her world, adding loneliness and isolation to her struggle. With her new online friend, she embarks on a voyage that will set Joana Halevi's memory free from oblivion. Based on the true story of Joana Halevi, The Rabbi's Wife, the Bishop's Wife addresses human behavior and condition: true and false alliances, betrayal and loyalty, destruction and redemption.
This book goes on a journey into alternative retellings of Jewish history in order to discover its patterns, which might give us clues about the future. It proposes exploring these versions of history as an intellectual exercise to come to terms with the traumas of the past, and to prevent repeated tragedies in the future. This book identifies the direction in which the Jewish people and their future leaders will develop. Since the Jewish people have never experienced modern sovereignty before, it promises to usher in far-reaching changes. Making a diagnosis of a national neurosis as the cause for four previous fiascos in Jewish history, the book explains what must be done in the twenty-first century to prevent the dark forces of the past from recurring, and explores the changes awaiting the Jewish religion and nation in the Land of Israel.
The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings provide a clear and useful introduction to the main aspects and issues pertaining to the scholarly study of Kings. These include textual history (including the linguistic profile), compositional history, literary approaches, key characters, history, important recurring themes, reception history and some contemporary readings.
An internationally recognized scholar and theologian shares a Jewish mysticism for our times Judaism, one of the world’s great spiritual traditions, is not addressed to Jews alone. In this masterful book, Arthur Green calls out to seekers of all sorts, offering a universal response to the eternal human questions of who we are, why we exist, where we are going, and how to live. Drawing on over half a century as a Jewish seeker and teacher, he shows us a Judaism that cultivates the life of the spirit, that inspires an inward journey leading precisely toward self-transcendence, to an awareness of the universal Self in whose presence we exist. As a neo-hasidic seeker, he is both devotional and boldly questioning in his understanding of God and tradition. Engaging with the mystical sources, he translates the insights of the Hasidic masters into a new religious language accessible to all those eager to build an inner life and a human society that treasures the divine spark in each person and throughout Creation.