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Swimming against the Current comprises a collection of essays celebrating the career and achievements of Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, who served as Executive Director of Hillel at UCLA for forty years and continues to be an influential leader in the Los Angeles and wider American Jewish community. These articles, like the honoree, challenge intellectual convention and accepted wisdom by breaking new ground in how they approach their subjects. They are divided into four categories that hold special interest for Seidler-Feller: Bible and Talmud, Jewish Thought and Theology, Modern Jewish History and Sociology, and Zionism and Jewish Politics. The volume also includes a sketch of Seidler-Feller’s life and work, a bibliography of his publications, and tributes by students and colleagues.
Emet le-Ya‘akov comprises a collection of essays celebrating the career and achievements of Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter, who has served the American and international Jewish community with distinction in his roles as a synagogue rabbi, university professor, and public intellectual. These articles, like the honoree, recognize the importance of both history and memory, emphasize the necessity of accuracy in historiography, and do not shy away from inconvenient truths. They are divided into three categories that help frame the discussion around “facing the truths of history”: Textual Traditions, Memory and Making of Meaning, and (Re)Creating a Usable Past. The volume also includes a brief sketch of Schacter’s life and work and a bibliography of his publications.
The Valmadonna Trust Library is the world's single most important and extensive private collection of Hebrew books. Assembled over the better part of the twentieth century by Mr. Jack Lunzer, the indefatigable Custodian of the Library, the collection comprises thousands of rare volumes from virtually all corners of the Jewish world and has stimulated a remarkable level of fascination and admiration among scholars and laypeople alike. In addition, there is a veritable "collection within a collection" of more than 550 broadsides; primarily single sheets of paper printed on one side for public distribution or posting. While broadsides have long served as important documentary sources of informa...
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Jewish Bible commentary in the Middle Ages took on two aspects, the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic. The first, Spanish interpretation, developed in a Muslim surrounding, which appreciated secular studies, the sciences, and Arabic literature, much of which it had translated from Greek. These studies made their mark on Bible exegesis, which sought the simple straightforward sense (peshat) of a verse and its grammatical meaning. The Ashkenazic school, however, situated in France and Germany, was firmly anchored in the rabbinic study hall and its exegesis was a continuation of the methods of Midrash and Aggadah as practiced in Mishnah and Talmud. In the beginning of the twelfth century, Ashkenazic...
"Defender of the Faithful is an intellectual and religious biography of Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv (1740-1809), one of the most fascinating and colorful Hasidic leaders of his time. Featuring examples of Levi Yitshak's extraordinary texts alongside insightful analysis, Arthur Green examines both Levi Yitshak's theology and broader philosophy"--
Among the intellectual luminaries dotting the millennia of Jewish history, none shines brighter than Maimonides (1138-1204). He was a rabbi, jurist, Talmudist, philosopher, physician, astronomer, and communal leader, and produced a myriad of writings on halakhah, theology, medicine, and philosophy that have attained near-canonical status. We have more source material from or about Maimonides than possibly any other Jewish figure in the medieval period, and more has been written about him than perhaps any other Jew in history. Epithets like the ‘Great Eagle’ and the ‘Western Light’ – and the glorifying statement ‘From Moses to Moses, none arose like Moses’ – reflect centuries ...
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesmen. Primitivism—the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called "primitive," non-Western peoples who were also subjugated and denigrated—was a powerful artistic critique of the modern world and was adopted by Jewish writers and artists to explore the urgent questions surrounding their own identity and status in Europe as insiders and outsiders. Jewish primitivism found expression in a variety of forms in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German literature, photography, and graphic art, including in the work of figures such as Franz Kafka, Y.L...