Zionist Arabesques: Modern Landscapes, Non-Modern Texts.
by Hadas Yaron
ISBN 978-1-934843-78-9
250 pp. cloth
$39.00
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Publication Date: August, 2010

Zionist Arabesques is an ethno-historical account of the landscape of the Jezreel Valley in Israel and explores how the modern landscape of the valley has been created, both physically and symbolically, from the perspective of both local and large-scale processes. It addresses not only the guiding principles of modern Israeli agriculture, its connection to Zionist settlement and ideology, and the evolvement of the Arab-Jewish conflict, but also examines the relevance of law, State policies and sector based politics, being a mixture of archival and ethnographic material composed with a unique textual structure. The book is useful for those interested in Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well in experimental writing styles.  


Reviews
 “… a compelling, original and well written piece of scholarship, and also a work of real passion and subtlety.

Zionist Arabesques focus(es) on the material, experienced reality of Zionism, its phenomenology in the Israeli/Palestinian landscape. Evil or bad intentions lose meaning and instead we focus on grids and trees, cows, borders, documents, narratives. In this way, the impact of Zionism gains a new meaning: a specific form of interaction of the modern and the non-modern (in the contradictory aspirations and worldviews of Zionist settlers between spatial geometry, markets and romanticism), meeting yet another form of interaction of the modern and non-modern (in the experience of the Palestine/Israeli landscape).

As such, Zionist Arabesques should be of interest to a wide audience, including not only anthropologists but also historians, critical theorists and the general public interested in the fates of Zionism – or of modernism.”
-- Reviel Netz, Professor of Classics, Stanford University

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

The Jewish Conundrum in World History.
by Alexander Militarev
ISBN 978-1-934843-43-7
250 pp. cloth
$39.00
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Publication Date: July, 2010

 Following what may be conventionally called the Jewish ethno-cultural model and tracing its performance throughout history, Alexander Militarev’s book is the first scholarly attempt to apply a synthetic, comprehensive approach to the Jewish phenomenon – an alternative to the metaphysical and religious ones – and to evaluate it in the comparative context. In highlighting the unique and disproportionately great Jewish contributions (and the recent Russian Jewish contribution, in particular) to the human civilization, it poses as its main question: “Why the Jews?” Militarev dedicates his book to the analysis of the Jewish phenomenon, its manifold reasons and consequences, couched as an essay replete with unexpected conclusions and debatable hypotheses. Laying bare the “kitchen” of scholarly research, Militarev embarks on a scholarly adventure akin to a film-noir who-dunnit, complete with intrigue, the need for stringent self-control, inexorable doubts, the thrill of the chase after the enigma’s solution.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924-1951.
by Henry Srebrnik
ISBN 978-1-936235-11-7
312 pp. cloth
$75.00
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Publication Date: August, 2010

 The American Jewish Communist movement played a major role in the politics of Jewish communities in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as in many other centers, between the 1920s and the 1950s. Making extensive use of Yiddish-language books, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and other materials, Dreams of Nationhood traces the ideological and material support provided to the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan in the far east of the Soviet Union by two American Jewish Communist-led organizations, the ICOR and the American Birobidzhan Committee. By providing a detailed historical examination of the political work of these two groups, the book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of 20th century Jewish life in the United States.

Reviews:

“Henry Srebrnik began his research of the place of Birobidzhan in the ideological space of American Jews over a decade ago. I believe I have read the majority of his publications on this fascinating and little-known topic, and this new book, Dreams of Nationhood, is the best among them.”
—Gennady Estraikh, New York University, author of In Harness: Yiddish Writers' Romance with Communism

“Dreaming of a better world during the Depression and World War II, American Jews and some non-Jewish activists supported the building of a Jewish refuge in the Soviet Union called Birobidzhan. Henry Srebrnik’s well-researched book, Dreams of Nationhood, shows readers that although short-lived, the American campaign for Birobidzhan was more widespread and important than anyone today might believe.  Its most important supporters were leftist, Communist activists in such groups as ICOR and Ambidjan.  However, Srebrnik painstakingly shows that in the 1930s and 1940s, Birobidzhan was discussed in polite company as a real alternative to Palestine. The book features Communist activists like Moishe Olgin and B.Z. Goldberg, as well as some unusual suspects including senators, pastors, well-known rabbis, and Albert Einstein.  Srebrnik forces the reader to ask whether this is a story of willful ignorance on the part of the Americans, who did not understand the violence of Stalin’s Soviet Union, or whether the idea of utopia simply captivated a group of people far away from the turmoil of 1930s and 1940s Europe? “
—David Shneer, University of Colorado at Boulder, author of Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture

Series: Jewish Identity in Post Modern Society

Anti-Semitism on the Campus: Past and Present.
by Eunice G. Pollack
ISBN 978-1-934843-82-6
450 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

Anti-Semitism on the Campus: Past and Present, edited by Eunice G. Pollack, is the first entry of a multidisciplinary series on anti-Semitism in America to be published by Academic Studies Press. In this volume, eighteen leading scholars explore the roots and manifestations of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at American, British, and Canadian colleges and universities over the course of the 20th century and the responses to such biases. Topics such as the intensification of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on individual campuses, the anti-Israel divestment and boycott movements, discrimination against Jewish faculty, students, and organizations, and students’ exposure to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism through popular culture, among others, are covered.

Series: Anti-Semitism in America

State Ideology in Commercial TV: Lessons from the Israeli Case.
by Noam Yuran
ISBN 978-1-934843-83-3
250 pp. cloth
$39.00
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Publication Date: September, 2010

 Within a relatively short span of time, the first commercial TV channel in Israel has rendered the well established state control of television obsolete. However, this triumph of commercial television does not represent a renouncement of the familiar Etatist ethos. It would appear that commercial television owes its success to its ability to reformulate this ethos in new terms, proper to a neo-liberal age. Rather than a liberating itself from state ideology, commercial television has become its central arena. Yuran analyzes this new form of ideological articulation and explores the conceptual relation between ideology and the medium of television.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Mysticism in Modern Hebrew Poetry.
by Hamutal Bar-Yosef
ISBN 978-1-936235-01-8
300 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

Challenging the notion that Jewish mysticism ceased to exist in the Hassidic enclaves of early nineteenth century Europe, Hamutal Bar-Yosef delves into the mystical elements of 20th century Israeli literature.  Exploring themes such as unity, death, and sex, Bar-Yosef traces the influence and the trends towards secular mysticism found in Russian, Yiddish, and early Hebrew writers, and examines the impact of Zionism in creating a modern, living mystical literature.  An exciting new text for anyone studying modern Hebrew literature.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Democratizing Judaism.
by Jack J. Cohen
ISBN 978-1-936235-16-2
315 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

Democratizing Judaism is a two-part examination of the Reconstructionist philosophy of Mordecai M. Kaplan. Part I is largely devoted to a defense of Kaplan against several serious critics. It also provides new insight into Kaplan's theology through reference to as as-yet unknown passages in his Diaries. Part II provides a critical analysis of the contemporary Reconstructionist movement and explores how a Kaplan disciple treats problems of democracy in Israel and issues of ethical theological concern.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Sex Rewarded, Sex Punished: A Study of the Status 'Female Slave' in Early Jewish Law.
by Diane Kriger
ISBN 978-1-934843-48-2
300 pp. cloth
$48.00
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Publication Date: November, 2010

A masterful intersection of Bible Studies, Gender Studies, and Rabbinic law, Diane Kriger explores the laws pertaining to female slaves in Jewish law. Comparing Biblical strictures with later Rabbinic interpretations as well as contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian codes of law, Kriger establishes a framework whereby a woman’s sexual identity also indicates her legal status. With sensitivity to the nuances in both ancient laws and ancient languages, Kriger adds greatly to our understanding of gender, slave status, and the matrilineal principle of descent in the Ancient Near East.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second Generation Religious Zionist Settlers.
by David C. Jacobson
ISBN 978-1-934843-72-7
250 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

In recent decades, a group of second generation religious Zionist West Bank settlers have turned away from the collectivist political messianic ideology of the first generation of settlers and have begun to explore poetry as a mode of individual self-expression. Based on interviews of eight key figures in this new trend and an analysis of fifty works by these poets, Beyond Political Messianism:  The Poetry of Second Generation Religious Zionist Settlers tells the story of how they revolutionized the religious Zionist settler culture by moving poetry into the mainstream of that culture, and how they introduced into the world of secular Israeli literature images and language styles drawn from their lives as religiously observant Jews.  Among the themes central to these poets’ concerns are: the formation of a religious identity based on faith and ritual observance, the relationship of the contemporary Jew to the Bible and to traditional Jewish texts, appropriate ways to write about erotic experiences, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Who is Afraid of Historical Redress: The Israeli Victim / Perpetrator Dichotomy.
by Ruth Amir
ISBN 978-1-934843-85-7
325 pp. cloth
$48.00
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Publication Date: November, 2010

 With the Holocaust resonating as the "thick background", historical redress processes in Israel render a particularly challenging case. The simultaneous concern with past, present and future redress campaigns as both victim and perpetrator is unique.  Who is Afraid of Historical Redress analyzes three cases of historical redress in Israel: the Yemeni children affair, the tinea capitis irradiations and the claims for the return of native land of the two Christian Palestinian villages of Iqrit and Bir'em.  All three cases were redressed under the juridical edifice of legal thought and action. The outcomes suggest that these processes were insufficient for achieving closure by the victims, atonement by those responsible and reconciliation among social groups.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

A Coat of Many Colors: Dress Culture in the Young State of Israel.
by Anat Helman
ISBN 978-1-934843-88-8
300 pp. cloth
$42.00
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Publication Date: July, 2011

 A Coat of Many Colors investigates Israel's first seven years as a sovereign state through the unusual prism of dress. Clothes worn by Israelis in the 1950s reflected political ideologies, economic conditions, military priorities, social distinctions, and cultural preferences, and all played a part in consolidating a new national identity. Based on a wide range of textual and visual historical documents, the book covers both what Israelis wore in various circumstances and what they said and wrote about clothing and fashion. Written in a clear and accessible style that will appeal to the general reader as well as to students and scholars, A Coat of Many Colors introduces the reader both to Israel's history during its formative years and to the rich field of dress culture.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac.
by Yuri Leving
ISBN 978-1-936235-19-3
pp. cloth
$39.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

“The Goalkeeper” is a new scholarly almanac devoted to the art of Vladimir Nabokov. Himself an ardent goalkeeper, the author of Lolita viewed soccer as more than a game: “I was less the keeper of a soccer goal than the keeper of a secret” (Speak, Memory). The inaugural collection features contributions from two dozen leading Nabokov scholars worldwide, including academic articles (Neil Cornwell, Gerard de Vries, Samuel Schuman, and others); roundtable discussions (Brian Boyd, Jeff Edmunds, Priscilla Meyer, David Rampton, Leona Toker); interviews (Dmitri Nabokov, Alvin Toffler); archival materials; the Kyoto Nabokov conference report; and book reviews (Pekka Tammi, Zoran Kuzmanovich, Galya Diment). The Nabokov Almanac, edited by Yuri Leving, is affiliated with the Nabokov Online Journal, published since 2007.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Changing Women, Changing Society.
by Dahlia Moore
ISBN 978-1-934843-84-0
250 pp. cloth
$39.00
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Publication Date: December, 2010

 In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Dahlia Moore explores the social and cultural forces at play in Israeli society and their effects on the changing status of women.  While delving into some of Israel’s unique and influential forces, such as the army, religious sects, and recent immigration, Moore also broadens her perspective, juxtaposing the status of Israeli women with that of women in other Western societies.  An excellent resource for scholars of gender and gender attitudes looking beyond North America and Europe.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Twentieth Century Jews: Forging Identity in the Land of Promise and in the Promised Land.
by Monty Noam Penkower
ISBN 978-1-936235-20-9
250 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: September, 2010

This extensively-researched collection of essays lucidly explores how members of the ever-beleaguered Jewish people grappled with their identities during the past century in the United States and in Eretz Israel, the new centers of Jewry's long historical experience. With the pivotal 1903 Kishinev pogrom setting the stage, the author proceeds to examine how the Land of Promise across the Atlantic exerted different influences on Abraham Selmanovitz, Felix Frankfurter, the founders of the American Council for Judaism, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Professor Penkower then shows how the prospect of nationalism in the biblical Promised Land engendered other tensions and transformations, ranging from the plight of Hayim Nahman Bialik, to rivalry within the Orthodox Jewish camp, to on-going strife between the political Left and Right over the nature of the emerging Jewish state.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Canada’s Jews: In Time, Space and Spirit.
ISBN 978-1-934843-86-4
250 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: June, 2011

Canada is home to one of the world’s largest and most culturally creative Jewish communities, one of the few in the Diaspora that continues to grow demographically.  With its ability to mirror trends found in Jewish communities elsewhere (particularly the United States) while simultaneously functioning as a distinct society, Canada’s Jewish community holds great interest for scholars, exercising a measurable influence on the culture and politics of World Jewry.  Consisting of a series of essays written by experts in their respective fields, Canada’s Jews is a topical encyclopaedia, covering a wide variety of topics, from history and religion to the intellectual and cultural contributions of Canada’s Jews.  An indispensable reference book for both laypeople and for scholars of Jewish and Canadian studies.

Series: Jews in Space and Time

Canadian Jews in the 21st Century: Identity and Demography.
by Jack Jedwab
ISBN 978-1-934843-75-8
200 pp. cloth
$35.00
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Publication Date: January, 2011

How many Jews are there in Canada? The answer depends on how being Jewish is defined, and by whom. Canada’s national statistical agency collects data on religion and on ethnic origin and thus offers the possibility of establishing an official number. While most Canadian Jews declare both their religion and ethnicity as Jewish, an important number define themselves as either one or the other. Underlying such declarations is an ongoing debate about what it means to be ethnically Jewish. What does the use of ethnicity as a basis for determining community membership imply in defining Canadian Jewish identity? Using census and survey data Canadian Jews in the 21st century: Identity and Demography explores the meaning of ethnicity for Canadian Jewry.

Series: Jewish Identity in Post Modern Society

Edicts and Verdicts: Jewish Life in 19th Century Palestine as Reflected in the Legal and Rabbinical Writings of the Period.
by Haim Katz
ISBN 978-1-936235-00-1
300 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: January, 2011

Tackling the history of the Jews in Palestine from a new and unusual angle, Haim Katz explores Jewish society in Eretz Israel in the 19th century as it is reflected in the legal minutia of every day life: verdicts and decisions; Halakhic edicts; Rabbinical letters as well as books that emanated from the nascent printing industry of Jewish society in Palestine at that time.

Katz divides his book into three different courses of societal development.  First is the spiritual struggle of Jewish society grappling with two opposing Messianic philosophies, the shadow of active and sometime successful missionaries, and the bitter internal conflict relating to modern education. The material struggle probes the demographics of Jewish society, its land purchases and trade, the rampant poverty of the Jews in Palestine, the inequitable Halukkah system, and the discord this engendered. Finally, Katz examines the social struggle and the conflict between Jews and Gentiles, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and the general intra-communal tensions of a small society of opinionated people.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

German Jewry Between Hope and Despair, 1871-1933.
edited by Nils Roemer
ISBN 978-1-934843-87-1
400 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: January, 2011

 German Jewry between Hope and Despair,1871-1933, provides important interpretations of this tumultuous and conflict-ridden period and invites readers to partake in the ongoing debate over modern Jewish identities and cultures. Marked at the outset by emancipation and the emergence of modern anti-Semitism, the period witnessed a profound transformation of Jewish social, political, and religious life culminating in the renaissance of Jewish cultures on the eve of the Holocaust. This textbook unites studies that inform our understanding of this historical epoch to this day as well as important historical revisions. Amongst the many contributions are texts by Michael Brenner, Willi Goetschel, Marion Kaplan, George L. Mosse, Peter Pulzer, and Till van Rahden.

Series: Jews in Space and Time

Denying of Denial: Debates About the Demography and Geo-Politics of the Holocaust.
edited by Alfred Kokh, Pavel Polian
ISBN 978-1-936235-34-6
350 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: January, 2011

Over the decades, the Holocaust has remained a critical issue both historically and politically.  This is due to the modernization of anti-Semitism in the West, where accusations of ritual murder have long been passe and claims that the Holocaust was a hoax are de riguer, and to the government sanctions of anti-Semitism in the East in countries such as Iran.  The purely scholarly problem of determining the number of victims, like other aspects of demography related to the Holocaust, have suddenly become closely embroiled in geopolitics and the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is now a context that has been forced upon it.  This book is imbued with these connections and interrelationships.  Avraham, Wolfgang Benz, Sergio Della Pergola, Mark Kupovetsky, Dieter Pohl, Aron Shneer, and the editors contribute their voices to the topic.

Series: Out of the Series

Israel's Political Economy: A Historical Perspective from Below.
by Lev Luis Grinberg
ISBN 978-1-936235-41-4
250 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: August, 2011

In Israel’s Political Economy, Grinberg summarizes his own work and that of other political economists, providing a coherent historical narrative since the beginning of Socialist Zionism (1904) until the Oslo Accords and the neo-liberalization of the economy (1994-1996). Combining eventful sociology, path dependency and institutional political economy, the book argues that historical political events have been shaped not only by political and economic forces but also by resistance struggles of marginal and weaker social groups: organized workers, Palestinians and Mizrachi Jews. Major historical turning points in history, such as the Separation War in 1948, the military occupation in 1967, and the Oslo peace process in 1993, are explained in the context of previous social and economic resistance struggles that affected the political outcomes.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

State Religious Education in Israel: Between Integration and Segregation.
by Zehavit Gross
ISBN 978-1-936235-33-9
200 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: July, 2011

In State Religious Education in Israel, Zehavit Gross analyzes the ideology of state religious education (SRE) in Israel as it is reflected in research, official circulars of the Ministry of Education and the public discourse published in the religious Zionist press.  In particular, Gross examines the ways in which SRE schools socialize their students, creating a population that will become active is particular spheres of Israeli politics.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Hating the Jews: The Rise of Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century.
by Gregg Rickman
ISBN 978-1-936235-25-4
250 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: September, 2011

With attacks by Muslims against Jews in Western Europe reaching all-time highs, Jews are now facing levels of genocidal anti-Semitism not seen since WWII.  Muslims committing attacks on Jews seek to substitute their own claims of victimhood for the Jews’ plight, defining themselves as the “new Jews.”  Their demands for recognition are accompanied by acts of public disobedience, violent street protests, and petty crime.  The Arab-Israeli struggle has been brought to Europe and extended to cover a hatred of Europe’s Jews as well as those residents in Israel.  Gregg Rickman, the United States’ first Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, provides this first-person account and in-depth examination of the rise of anti-Semitism in the 21^st century.

Series: Anti-Semitism in America

Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud.
by Shulamit Valler
ISBN 978-1-936235-36-0
300 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: May, 2011

Both the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud depict a wide range of sorrowful situations tied to every level of society and to the complexities of human behavior and the human condition.  The causes and expressions of sorrow amongst the Sages, however, are different from their counterparts amongst common people or women, with descriptions varying between the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud.  In Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud, Valler explores more than 50 stories from both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds, focusing on these issues.   

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Alfred Dreyfus: Man, Milieu, Mentality and Midrash.
ISBN 978-1-936235-39-1
300 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: October, 2011

When people say the Dreyfus Affair split a nation or inaugurated a new era, they are exaggerating and using figurative language. The Affair grew out of attitudes and opinions that were already in the process of changing by the final decade of the nineteenth century, and these attitudes and opinions were engrained in people’s minds, their ordinary, everyday ways of seeing the world, and were reflected as well in the more refined perceptions and feelings of the arts, the sciences, and the philosophies of the period.  In this book, Simms explores many of these changes in the social and intellectual milieu, as they push and pull, influence and reshape one another.  This book finds that midrash is at once a stratagem used by Jews, both consciously and not, to survive in a non-Jewish and often anti-Jewish world and and as such, can be used to discuss the Dreyfus Affair and the people involved in it.

Series: Jews in Space and Time

Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I.
ISBN 978-1-934843-61-1
250 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: March, 2011

Blood Will Tell explores the ways in which writers, thinkers, and politicians used blood and vampire-related imagery to express social and cultural anxieties in the decades leading up to the First World War.  Covering a wide variety of topics, including science, citizenship, gender, and anti-Semitism, Robinson demonstrates the ways in which rhetoric tied to blood and vampires permeated political discourse and transcended the disparate cultures of Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, forming a cohesive political and cultural metaphor.  An excellent resource, both for students of nineteenth century cultural history and for those interested in the historical roots of Western fascination with vampires.

Series: Out of the Series

Life In Transit: Jews in Postwar Lodz, 1945-1950.
by Shimon Redlich
ISBN 978-1-936235-21-6
pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: February, 2011

 Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich’s widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich’s personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich’s research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.

Series: Jews of Poland

Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature, Artscroll, and the Construction of Ultra-Orthodox Identity.
by Yoel Finkelman
ISBN 978-1-936235-37-7
250 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: June, 2011

In every Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] neighborhood today, bookstores overflow with an expansive variety of popular titles written by and for Haredi Jews. Strictly Kosher Reading offers a close reading of contemporary Haredi fiction, self-help, history, and popular theology, explaining how this isolationist religious community constructs its complex and paradoxical relationship with contemporary culture.  Like isolationist religious groups throughout the world, Haredi Jews, as reflected in their popular literature, struggle to remain distinctive in a culture they find both frightening and attractive. Haredi popular literature sets up sharp boundaries between Haredi Jews and others,. Yyet, the same literature simultaneously undermines and blurs those boundaries.


Series: Jewish Identity in Post Modern Society

The Pale God: Israeli Secularism and Spinoza's Philosophy of Culture.
by Gideon Katz
ISBN 978-1-936235-38-4
200 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: May, 2011

In The Pale God, Katz deals with the relationship between secularism and religious tradition. Katz begins with a description of the secular options as expressed by Israeli intellectuals, which he argues have led to a dead end, and continues with a discussion of new options which must be sought. One of the key sources for these options is the works of Spinoza, which Katz explains is does not agree with Nietzsche's catchphrase referring to "the death of God."  In his view, Spinoza tried to undermine the authority of religious virtuosos and establish the image of a rational "Pale God." Such changes could channel religious tradition to the basic principles of secular political rule. Katz then sums up his discussion by showing that the secular option is inherent in Israeli society and fits the type of secularism that Zionism instilled in the Jewish people, complementing the traditional trends already deeply rooted there.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Wisdom’s Little Sister: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought.
by Abraham Melamed
ISBN 978-1-936235-32-2
350 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: April, 2011

As a recently established field of Jewish thought, Jewish political philosophy has made increasingly frequent appearances in recently edited histories of Jewish philosophy. Following the pioneering efforts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, Jewish political philosophy gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcomed development. Consisting of selected papers published in English over the last thirty years, Wisdom’s Little Sister concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa'adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth century. These were the formative periods in the development of Jewish political philosophy, when Jewish scholars, versed in the canonical Jewish sources (biblical and rabbinic), encountered Greek political philosophy as transmitted by Muslim philosophers such as Alfarabi, Ibn Bajja and Averroes. In combining Greek, Jewish and Muslim thought, these scholars are the originators of what we now know as Jewish political philosophy.     

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Maimonides as a Biblical Interpretor.
ISBN 978-1-936235-28-5
260 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: March, 2011

Although Maimonides did not write a running commentary on any book of the Bible, biblical exegesis occupies a central place in his writings, particularly in his Guide for the Perplexed. In this book, Klein-Braslavy offers a collection of essays on several key biblical interpretations by Maimonides dealing with: the creation of the world; the story of the Garden of Eden; Jacob's dream of the ladder; King Solomon as an esoterist philosopher; and the problem of exoteric and esoteric biblical interpretations in the Guide. Special attention is paid to Maimonides' methods of interpretation and to his esoteric way of writing. Some of the articles in this volume were originally published in Hebrew, and appear here for the first time in an English translation. 

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig.
by Gershon Greenberg
ISBN 978-1-936235-31-5
450 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: February, 2011

Historical conditions at the end of the eighteenth century opened an arena between the formerly autonomous Jewish community and the Christian world, which yielded new departure points for philosophy, including revelation and philosophical reason, dialectically considered; rationalism as intellection and advancing consciousness, heteronomous revelation, historicity, and universal morality. In Modern Jewish Thinkers, Greenberg restructures the history of modern Jewish thought comprehensively, providing first-time English translations of Reggio, Krokhmal,  Maimon, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher, Steinheim,  Ascher, Einhorn, Samuel David Luzzatto and Hermann Cohen. The availability of these sources fills a gap in the field and stimulates new directions for teaching and scholarly research in modern Jewish thought, going beyond Spinoza and Mendelssohn at one end, and to popular 20th century figures on the other.

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Without Red Strings or Holy Water: Maimonides’ Mishne Torah.
edited by H. Norman Strickman
ISBN 978-1-936235-48-3
160 pp. cloth
$48.00
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Publication Date: February, 2011

Maimonides was one of the greatest Jewish personalities of the Middle Ages: – a halakhist par excellence, a great philosopher, a political leader of his community, and a guardian of Jewish rights. In 1180 C.E., Maimonides composed his Halakhic magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah, which can be described without exaggeration as the greatest code of Jewish law to be composed in the post-Talmudic era, unique in scope, originality and language.  In addition to dealing with an immense variety of Jewish law, from the laws of Sabbath and festival observances, dietary regulations, and relations between the sexes, to the sacrificial system, the construction of the Temple, and the making of priestly garments, the Mishneh Torah represents Maimonides’ conception of Judaism.  Maimonides held that the version of Judaism believed in and practiced by many pious Jews of his generation had been infected by with pagan notions. In the Mishneh Torah, he aimed at cleansing Judaism from these non-Jewish practices and beliefs and impressing upon readers that Jewish law and ritual are free from irrational and superstitious practices.  Without Red Strings or Holy Water explores Maimonides’ views regarding God, the commandments, astrology, medicine, the evil eye, amulets, magic, theurgic practices, omens, communicating with the dead, the messianic era, midrashic literature, and the oral law.  Without Red Strings or Holy Water will be of interest in to all who are interested in the intellectual history of Judaism.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life