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: April, 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, heteronymous 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.

Reviews:

"By making available well-chosen, well-introduced and clearly translated texts by so many nineteenth-century thinkers hitherto unavailable in English, Gershon Greenberg's Modern Jewish Thinkers will change the way the subject is taught.  We can now put in students' hands a single volume that will guide us through the labyrinthine twists and turns of Jewish philosophy from Mendelssohn to the interwar period.  This is a major achievement and a major event for the classroom!"
—David Sorkin, Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Modern Jewish Thinkers is a quintessential anthology, literally a 'gathering of flowers' from the garden of modern Jewish thought. Greenberg has selected and translated from German and Hebrew an array of the most seminal texts, hitherto largely unavailable in English, which exemplify various trajectories of Jewish theological encounter with the challenge of modern philosophical culture. This richly annotated source book will surely be indispensable for scholars and students alike."
—Paul Mendes-Flohr, The University of Chicago

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

A Partisan from Vilna.
by Rachel Margolis, edited by Marjorie Margolis
ISBN 978-1-934843-91-8
520 pp. cloth
$40.00
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Publication Date: April, 2010

A Partisan of Vilna is the memoir of Rachel Margolis, the sole survivor of her family, who escaped from the Vilna Ghetto with other members of the FPO (United Partisan Organization) resistance movement and joined the Soviet partisans in the forests of Lithuania to sabotage the Nazis. Beginning with an account of Rachel’s life as a precocious, privileged girl in pre-war Vilna, it goes on to detail life in the Vilna Ghetto, including the development and struggles of the FPO against the Nazis. Finally, the book chronicles the escape of a group of FPO members into the forest of Belarus, where Rachel became a partisan fighter. Rather than “keep house” back at their bunker like other female partisans, Rachel demanded assignments to active duty alongside the men. Going on military assignments, she burned down a bridge, blew up railroad tracks, and helped bring in food supplies for her fellow partisans.  The book opens with an introductory essay by renowned historian Antony Polonsky.

Reviews:

"One of the last surviving partisans of Vilna, Rachel Margolis has written a vivid and compelling account of the murder of Lithuania’s Jews, and of the battle for survival and dignity amongst those who escaped. It is also a testament to those who in the midst of degradation and destruction continued to embrace the best ideals of humanity even as they determined to resist and fight back against the Nazis and their local collaborators. And, at the same time it is an intimate portrait of a creative and vibrant community, the Jews of Vilna, as well as a deeply personal account of growth and maturity in the midst of that turbulent and tragic period.

This book serves as a stark reminder to those who would deny or trivialize the reality of the Holocaust in Lithuania and reminds us once again of the human dimension of that genocide. The questions that it raises about resistance and complicity, collaboration and betrayal, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, are questions that resonate even today. It is only by facing the past and that we can hope to build a better future. Rachel Margolis, through this memoir, as well as her other activities in Vilna, has helped set us on that path. We are all in her debt for doing so, and can only hope for the widest possible impact of this evocative, authentic and powerful memoir."
—Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs, Simon Wiesenthal Center

"Rachel Margolis' A Partisan from Vilna is an important memoir. Like many survivor memoirs, there are three major sections: Before, During and After. But unlike most memoirs Margolis expends considerable time and energy depicting her youth in Vilna as the daughter of a prominent physician. She also describes vividly the transition in Vilna from independent rule to Soviet rule and then the German invasion and its aftermath; mass murder followed by ghettoization. As a Partisan fighter she offers important information on the struggle within the ghetto between resistance forces and the general population. She engages the all important issue surrounding the decision by the resistance leader Wittenberg to give himself up and thus save – at least for a time – the ghetto from German retribution, and finally she takes us through the great debate in Vilna between those wanting to wage battle within the ghetto and those who felt that the only meaningful way to fight was to go to the woods. Throughout, she also shares with the reader the personal story of her own life; her relationship with her parents; her intellectual maturation and independence, her separation from her parents and their deaths, and her finding love in the midst of catastrophe. As if these issues were not sufficient to give the memoir significant importance, Margolis portrays with candor and considerable insight the tensions between Jewish Partisans and Soviet fighters, between Polish and Lithuanian forces and also the peasant population surrounding the woods. She does not portray herself as a hero but in the ordinariness of everyday life under the most extraordinary of conditions. The result is a compelling, powerful and poignant memoir that takes us inside the ghettos and the bunkers, inside the woods and the dugouts, into the battles and the struggles for survival that shaped her young life."
—Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical And Religious Implications of the Holocaust, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University

"Arguably the most extraordinary Holocaust survivor of our time, Rachel Margolis left a safe hiding place to join her (doomed) family in the Vilna Ghetto, then left the ghetto to join the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests. After the collapse of the USSR, she helped build a small Holocaust museum, then rediscovered, transcribed and published the lost diary of a Christian Pole who witnessed tens of thousands of murders of Jews by enthusiastic Lithuanian nationalists. In her mid eighties, she published the Russian original of this memoir. The local anti-Semitic press focused on one paragraph, took it out of context, and then – in May 2008, armed police came looking for Rachel and a fellow woman partisan survivor. Currently living in Israel and prevented from returning to her native Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) by the prosecutors’ campaign, she is a survivor who can’t return home. This book is the reason why. In publishing it in English, Academic Studies Press does a great service to both the dwindling community of Holocaust survivors, and the growing community of readers who just want to know."
—Dovid Katz, Professor of Judaic Studies, Vilnius University; Director of Research, Vilnius Yiddish Institute

Series: Jews of Poland

The Scroll of Secrets: The Hidden Messianic Vision of R. Nachman of Breslav.
by Zvi Mark
ISBN 978-1-934843-93-2
320 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: April, 2010


Concealed for two centuries and known only to a select individual in each generation, the Scroll of Secrets is the hidden Messianic vision of R. Nachman of Breslav. Despite being written in an encoded language, with acronyms and abbreviations, after a clarification and cautious reconstruction of what can be decoded, the author presents the reader with an exalted Messianic vision. The book marks a turning point in our understanding of R. Nachman's spiritual world, and initiates a renewed discussion of an intriguing Hasidism that excites scholars and broad circles within the Jewish and Israeli publics. The reader is presented with a sublime and enticing vision of the eschatological End of Days that contains song and prayer, Torah, melodies, longings, and love and compassion for every man.

Reviews:

"R. Nachman of Breslav’s Scroll of Secrets is indubitably the most esoteric document in the entire history of Hasidism and arguably the most obscure. For the first time in the scholarship of Breslav Hasidism, Dr. Mark has printed its Hebrew original from manuscripts to which he gained access, decoded the numerous cryptic abbreviations and hints, and treated in detail its major concepts, offering an incisive analysis of its contents, which removes the veil of secrecy. He demonstrates the major role played by R. Nachman’s messianic self-perception in the formulations found not only in the scroll, but also in some other writings, where this issue has been obfuscated. Dr. Mark highlights the innovative self-understanding of R. Nachman and his feeling o f being the final revelation of Hasidism, higher even than that of his great-grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov and the Great Maggid of Medzerich.

No doubt scholarship of the Breslav Hasidism, and of Hasidism in general will benefit from the magnificent work of patiently and cautiously revealing the content of this fascinating document. The study of mysticism too, will be enriched by a better understanding of one of the most original Jewish mystics."
—Moshe Idel, Professor of Jewish Thought, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"Zvi Mark interprets and deciphers Rabbi Nachman’s prophecy by placing it within the wider context of the Breslavian writing. His analysis draws on an impressive knowledge and a sensitive, creative, and reasonable reading of this complicated literature. Reading Mark’s fascinating book enriches and deepens our understanding of the inner world of Rabbi Nachman, one of the most original Eastern European Jewish thinkers in the Modern Period."
—Immanuel Etkes, Professor of History of Jewish People, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"This book is one of the most important studies on Hassidism written in the last century. One reason is that Mark has a unique combination of spiritual sensitivity and academic rigorousness that is a model for writing on Chasidism. Not only is this book of crucial significance for the understanding of Breslav Chasidism, it is also fascinating example of eschatological thought that should interest readers of all faiths. For those who think that scholarship is a synonym for dullness, this book will be an eye opener. The scintillating translation is very readable and makes the author's path breaking work accessible to those who do not have a deep background in Chasidic thought but without deviating from the high standards the author set for himself. This book deals with fundamental issues in Jewish thought that are still live questions today. While helping understand the Jewish thought in the past, it is equally a contribution to current thought and discussion. There will be a wide readership that is in debt to the Academic Studies Press for making this Hebrew language classic available to English readers."
—Shaul Stampfer, Sandrow

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Another Way, Another Time: Religious Inclusivism and the Sacks Chief Rabbinate.
by Meir Persoff
ISBN 978-1-934843-90-1
450 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: March, 2010

British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks – now Baron Sacks of Aldgate in the City of London – launched his tenure of office in 1991 with the aim of an inclusivist Decade of Jewish Renewal. Within a few years, fulfilling his installation prediction that ‘I will have failures, but I will try again, another way, another time,’ he was attracting calls, from opponents and supporters, for his resignation and the abolition of his office. Reviewing Sacks’ early writings and pronouncements on the theme of inclusivism, Another Way, Another Time demonstrates how, repeatedly, the Chief Rabbi said ‘irreconcilable things to different audiences’ and how, in the process, he induced his kingmaker and foremost patron, Lord (Stanley) Kalms, to declare of Anglo-Jewry: ‘We are in a time warp, and fast becoming an irrelevance in terms of world Jewry.’ Citing support from a variety of sources, this study contends that the Chief Rabbinate has indeed reached the end of the road and explores other paths to the leadership of a pluralistic – and, ideally, inclusivist – community.

Reviews:

"[Persoff] has been able to deploy his material against the background of an extensive knowledge of the inner world of British Jewry, gathered over a lifetime reporting and commenting upon it without fear and without favour. Another Way, Another Time will certainly not be the last word on Jonathan Sacks. But all who write on this subject hereafter will need to measure their efforts against the yardstick Dr Persoff has fashioned, and which he now sets before us."
—Geoffrey Alderman, Michael Gross Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham

"There is probably no one better qualified than Persoff to write [this] book, having been at the heart of communal matters in his career at the Jewish Chronicle for more than 40 years."
—Hyam Corney, The Jerusalem Post

"[Persoff's] indefatigable journalist's instinct and connections have served him well in what is undoubtedly the best-researched book on contemporary Anglo-Jewry."
—The Jewish Quarterly

"Meir Persoff's Another Way, Another Time is a devastating indictment of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' 20-year tenure [as Chief Rabbi]. It illustrates in embarrassing detail the yawning gap between learning and erudition, which the incumbent has in spades, and wisdom and maturity, which he seems to be lacking to an even higher degree. But perhaps nobody could have done better, because the office itself has become obsolete.

The book is replete with examples. On the one hand, the chief rabbi is trying to present Judaism as an open and inclusive faith calculated to make a good impression on the gentiles. On the other, he sees himself as an advocate of an Orthodoxy, the right-wing of which is determined to 'out-frum' him. The radicalism that has come to dominate the Orthodox world has no room for alternatives in Judaism and no respect for other faiths.

By now, many of those who once supported him seem to realize that his office has become irrelevant. Some may even wish that he'd retire now as a first step towards abolishing the Victorian institution (which the British mandate bequeathed to the yishuv and from which Israel is now suffering). This may even help revitalize Anglo-Jewry, which the dwindling community badly needs and richly deserves."
—Canadian Jewish News

"Meir Persoff, in this well-researched volume, examines the record of Sacks, who took on the post in September 1991, and comes to the conclusion that the British Chief Rabbinate has outlived its usefulness. It has, he writes in the preface, 'indeed reached the end of the road.' An even more damaging assessment of the office and of its current holder comes in the foreword by Dr Geoffrey Alderman, an academic and an acerbic weekly commentator on Anglo-Jewry in the Jewish Chronicle, who writes that 'under Professor Lord Sacks, the office of chief rabbi has become an object of scorn across much of the Jewish world.'

The Hugo Gryn controversy, from which Sacks never fully recovered, was far from the only one in which he was embroiled, trying to avoid rebuke from the Right while at the same time avoiding alienating the Left. There were, among others, the issues over the role of women in Orthodox life; whether marriages performed under Progressive auspices should be recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, even when the couple concerned were halachically Jewish; and whether Progressive rabbis should be called up to the Torah in Orthodox synagogues. The most recent one, only a few months old - and Persoff is to be congratulated on making the book so up to date - focused on the admission criteria of the JFS, the largest Jewish secondary school in Europe. Sacks emerged from none of these covered in glory, being criticized for whatever he did or said by both sides.

There is probably no one better qualified than Persoff to write such a book, having been at the heart of communal matters in his career at the Jewish Chronicle for more than 40 years and, since his retirement to Israel, having the time to research archive material - and the knowledge of what to look for - not only in England but in America as well. He set out with the aim of proving that the Chief Rabbinate will not - indeed should not - survive.  Personally, I hope he is wrong because, among other things, it brings prestige to Anglo-Jewry from the outside world. Having read the book, however, I am beginning to have doubts."
—Jerusalem Post

"Another Way, Another Time is the first full-scale study of the Sacks chief rabbinate, and the picture presented is devastating. With the aid of copious original sources such as newspapers, correspondence and interviews, British historian and veteran journalist Meir Persoff shows how Sacks's top priority has been staying in the good graces of the Haredi, or strictly Orthodox, faction, whose high birthrate has made it the fastest-growing component of British Jewry. To achieve this, he has repeatedly acted to delegitimize the non-Orthodox movements - Reform, Liberal and Masorti - sometimes in ways personally insulting to their leaders. He has even gone so far as to delegitimize himself, withdrawing the first edition of a book he published in 2002 that aroused Haredi complaints, and rewriting the offending passages before republication. Ironically, it is clear from the documentation that Persoff has gathered that the Orthodox circles Sacks strives to placate will never consider him Orthodox enough no matter what he does.

Persoff makes his case that Sacks, by nature a thinker rather than a politician, made a poor career choice in seeking the chief rabbinate. But the book does not come to grips with the question of whether even someone far more politically adroit could have succeeded, given the structural constraints of the position that Persoff himself describes in detail. Simply put, a man who represents only the most moderate form of Orthodoxy - which used to be, but is no longer, professed by most British Jews - cannot also speak for the entire spectrum of the Jewish community, which today ranges religiously from far left to far right. In that sense Sacks may be an unfortunate victim of history. If so, the book's title is certainly apt: the position of Chief Rabbi was 'another way' for 'another time,' but not for the religiously fractured present."
—The Forward

"Persoff argues that 'many (if not most) regard the Chief Rabbinate as divisive, and would not miss it should it cease to exist.' Building on this statement, by analysing how the inclusivist vision explicitly laid down as a template for the Sacks Chief Rabbinate has repeatedly failed to be implemented, he collates an impressive array of sources to demonstrate how separatism, bitter infighting and a marked failure to cultivate inclusivism have prevailed. He examines the variety of crises that have mired the Chief Rabbi, including the fate of Jewish Continuity, the Women in the Community project, and the Hugo Gryn affair, and highlights the Chief Rabbi's role in recent controversies over conversion, especially as played out in the JFS case.

In a chapter entitled 'The Mirage of Unity,' Persoff shows that calls have repeatedly been made throughout the history of the Chief Rabbinate for the abolition of the office. He assesses how, from both the religious left and right, it has been criticised either as unrepresentative or as an inappropriate secular construct. While drawing attention to the perpetual problems of the Chief Rabbinate, he largely follows the received historiography of Anglo-Jewry. This suggests that a once-largely unified community, which sought to uphold an umbrella model encompassing all who wished to be included, has become increasingly polarised as a result of religious shifts. Quite aside from internal shifts, the transformation of British sensibilities towards religion over that period is also significant. Indeed, Persoff's analysis points to the growing importance of ethnicity, rather than religion, as a factor in Anglo-Jewish identity.

As Lord Sacks approaches retirement in 2013, Persoff argues against the lasting value of the post. The latest data on synagogue affiliation highlights how Anglo-Jewry is changing. Mainstream Orthodoxy is losing its majority share - indicating the seeming necessity to reconsider the future role of a Chief Rabbi."
—The Jewish Chronicle

"Persoff has now turned his attention to the tenure of Jonathan Sacks, again primarily on the matter of how he has dealt with the progressive tendencies on the left and the fundamentalist ones on the right. Once more, his work is essentially a source-book with numerous, substantial quotations that he has carefully combed from a large number of varied archives that will prove invaluable for all future studies of the subject."
—Stefan Reif, St. John's College, Cambride, published in the Journal of Jewish Studies

"[A]n important book, especially for Anglo-Jewry, because it chronicles and documents its many internal disputes with and around the office of the current chief rabbi ... [It] is also a description of a paradigm shift ... the shift of the Jewish community in Britain away from its once-largely monolithic structure ... The intellectual standing of Lord Sacks gives his office much more prominence than reality would warrant. The fact that the Board of Deputies, following established practice, remains wedded to the Chief Rabbinate is calculated to enhance the standing of both institutions. But the writing is on the wall, and the collapse is likely to come when Rabbi Sacks retires, which some hope will be soon ... Now, when it is an incontrovertible fact - relentlessly argued in the book - that Rabbi Sacks' standing is declining, there are reasons to ignore him as much as possible. Except, perhaps, to join forces with [Lord] Stanley Kalms to bring about his retirement, for example into a chair at Yeshiva University in New York or another academic post."
—Dow Marmur, MANNA

"Persoff's work is presented in a broadly objective, scholarly manner. His quotations from sources are immense...Persoff's work highlights the rather less positive perception of the current chief rabbi that is held by certain sectors of the British Jewish community. His detailed account of the controversies in which the chief rabbi has been caught up with different elements of the community suggests this is more than just a case of familiarity breeding contempt. Persoff does not claim that it is Sacks's responsibility that the Chief Rabbinate has outlived its value. It is an outcome of the office that, for all Sacks's lofty statements, he has been unable to reverse."

—Miri Freud-Kandel, SPME


Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Horizontal Society: Understanding the Covenant and Alphabetic Judaism (vol 1 and vol 2).
by Jose Faur
ISBN 978-1-936235-04-9
676 pp.
$0.00
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Publication Date: January, 2010

The Horizontal Society is an exposition of rabbinic thought as exemplified by Maimonides. The thought streams of Greece, Rome, and Christendom serve as a contrast. This work is in the Hebrew rhetorical tradition of melisa. The main text in five sections—The God of Israel, The Books of Israel, The Governance of Israel, The Memory of Israel, and The Folly of Israel—focuses on these core matters. It includes numerous references to orient the reader. The mode is similar to the author's previous work, such as Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition, interacting with the latest thought from today's academy.

This book illustrates the horizontal organization of the Jewish people. Other social organization is based on hierarchy. Two principles made this difference possible for Israel. First, the Hebrew Scriptures alone propose that every human being is created in the image of God.This necessitates the absolute equality of every human being. Second, the Sinai covenant establishes the Law as the supreme authority. Whereas in other societies, might is the source of authority, in Judaism authority is limited by the Law. These principles were summarized by the last Prophet of Israel: "Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously…, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Mal 2:10). There is a subdivided bibliography of forty pages, including both Jewish and "Western" sources. The scholarly apparatus includes indices of terms, names, and subjects. There are also seventy appendices of interest to rabbinic readership.

Reviews (of the hardcover edition):

"an extraordinary synthesis of his three previous English-language works, particularly his groundbreaking study Golden Doves with Silver Dots… It is the indispensable concept of Religious Humanism that has served as the central theme of Jose Faur’s many writings and in The Horizontal Society he gives the reader the summa of his thinking on the subject, thus offering the most illuminating introduction to Jewish civilization that we currently possess."
—David Sasha, Director of the Center for Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, New York                                                               

"[Faur is] a great specialist in Talmudic literature in whom we can see a scholarship of the same caliber as Saul Lieberman or David Weiss Halivni."
—Thierry Alcoloumbre

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler.
by Edmund Kessler
ISBN 978-1-934843-98-7
160 pp. cloth
$30.00
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Publication Date: February, 2010

Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years 1942 and 1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who, as a teenager, was a caretaker for the hidden Jews on his family’s farm. Edmund’s daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written an epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. This volume is a tremendous resource for historians, scholars and those interested in the Holocaust.

Reviews:

"The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is a slim volume with considerable power. In prose and poetry, Kessler describes the conditions of Jewish life in the large but understudied ghetto of Lwow, Poland. His observations are keen, precise, his tone reserved and understated. He writes simply: 'needless to say, conditions were difficult.' Elsewhere he says: 'I owe my survival to the fact that admirable people still in the world.'"
—Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University (Los Angeles)

"The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is not only a gripping account of the fate of Lwow Jewry during the war but also a unique mirror of the parallel perspectives of the rescued and their rescuers. This rich collection includes Kessler's wartime diary, his wartime poetry, and a 1998 memoir by Kazimierz Kalwinski, the son of the Polish couple who hid Kessler, his wife and 22 other Jews on their farm. Kessler was not what many regard as 'a typical Polish Jew.' He was an accomplished attorney, highly educated and spoke Polish as his first language. But in a way, Kessler was representative of a now destroyed subculture, the rich world of pre-war acculturated middle class Galician Jewry, a world which combined a deep love of Polish culture with a strong devotion to Jewish identity. Kessler was both an attorney and a poet, a shrewd observer for whom the horrors that he was experiencing only encouraged him to reaffirm his humanity through poetry of witness. It is especially important that this collection includes Kalwinski's memoirs. To hide Jews in German occupied Poland was to expose oneself and one's family to the risk of execution. It was not so easy to procure food and to secure a hiding place from the scrutiny of prying eyes at a time when Germans were conducting constant searches for food and for hidden arms. How does one do this for 24 people? This book is indeed an important addition to our knowledge of the Holocaust."
—Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam professor of history, Trinity College (Hartford, CT), author of Who Will Write Our History?

Series: Jews of Poland

The Mind Behind the Gospels: A Commentary to Matthew 1–14.
by Herbert Basser
ISBN 978-1-934843-33-8
396 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

In this work, Herbert Basser uses a new translation of Matthew, graciously offered by Peter Zaas (with some minor revisions by David Malone and Herbert Basser), to give us a verse-by-verse commentary to the first half of the Gospel based on his study of Matthew through the lens of Jewish texts. These texts, skillfully interpreted by Basser, illuminate the powerful poetry and mystery behind much of Matthew’s genius in reworking evangelists’ sources. These Jewish materials provide a creative, cultural way of thinking about what God expects from human beings infused with the words and images of Matthew. Basser demonstrates how Jewish idioms and artistry move the speeches, story, and figure of Jesus through various layers of Church tradition, from a Jewish preacher to a Gentile savior. Each chapter of commentary is preceded by a preliminary discussion, and the book is introduced by an accessible, scholarly  preface and introduction discussing the methodological issues of the commentary as a whole. In many ways, this book deepens Basser’s initial views of the New Testament in his Studies in Exegesis, (Leiden and Boston, E.J. Brill, 2000). The present book will appeal to a broad audience of knowledgeable readers of any or no faith. Basser is presently completing his annotations to the Epistle of James for The Jewish Annotated New Testament, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Reviews:

"Herbert Basser's commentary on Matthew 1-14 both offers fresh insights into the composition of the First Gospel and makes a major contribution to the understanding of the Jewish roots of Christian origins. Employing later compilations of Jewish literature along with the expected Tannaitic, Targumic and Qumran materials, he is able to construct an interpretive model of how Jews read Scripture, discerned orthopraxy and maintained community. His approach does not artificially force Judaism into a predetermined model; instead, it recognizes that within the diversity of that thought there exist particular interpretive strategies and rhetorical modes of argumentation. Confirming many of his connections are both Septuagintal readings and Syriac translations of both Hebrew biblical material and early (Greek) Christian literature. Basser's decision generally to avoid theoretical issues of synoptic parallels for criticism and textual variants is wise. The commentary does address synoptic parallels and textual variants where relevant."
—Amy-Jill Levine, Vanderbilt University Divinity School

"This book can be genuinely, even startlingly, transformative. Certainly, it is one of  the most seminal volumes I have read in recent years--as one brilliant "mind" from antiquity is here explicated by another from modernity, admirably providing "new and strong oars for navigating the Gospel material afloat in the sea of the Jewish literary tradition" (p. 18)."
—Michael Cook, Hebrew Union College , Jewish Institute of Religion, published on H-Judaic, January 2010

"Herbert Basser’s book on Matthew is of the highest quality.  It is a thrilling piece of work of outstanding scholarship."
—Shamma Friedman, Jewish Theological Seminary and Bar-Ilan University

"Herbert Basser’s volume on Matthew adds significantly to the scholarship on the Jewish sources of the Gospel text.  His methods and analyses greatly enhance our understanding of first century Judaism and the influential reach of its biblical and rabbinic concepts."
—Rochelle L. Millen, Wittenberg University

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages.
by Raphael Jospe
ISBN 978-1-934843-09-3
620 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the formative period of medieval Jewish philosophy, from its beginnings with Saadiah Gaon to its apex in Maimonides, when Jews living in Islamic countries and writing in Arabic were the first to develop a conscious and continuous tradition of philosophy. The book includes a dictionary of selected philosophic terms, and discusses the Greek and Arabic schools of thought that influenced the Jewish thinkers and to which they responded. The discussion covers: the nature of Jewish philosophy, Saadiah Gaon and the Kalam, Jewish Neo-Platonism, Bahya ibn Paqudah, Abraham ibn Ezra's philosophical Bible exegesis, Judah Ha-Levi's critique of philosophy, Abraham ibn Daud and the transition to Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and the controversy over Maimonides and philosophy.

Review:

"This volume is [a] great achievement. [Dr. Jospe's] book can be used as both a textbook and reference book because of its clear and extensive index of names and topics. Yet the clarity of the book's presentation and its readability make it a perfect introductory volume for a lay reader. His introductory chapter “What is Jewish Philosophy" alone is worth the price of the book because it surveys the wide variety of approaches of Jewish philosophy. There is, as Dr. Jospe makes very clear, no single, uniform Jewish philosophy. Thus, many Jews who understand this, become confused, throw up their hands and ask, 'If so, what should I believe?' Jospe's excellent book helps people reach an answer."
—Israel Drazen, The Jewish Eye

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Jewish Religion After Theology.
by Avi Sagi
ISBN 978-1-934843-20-8
264 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: May, 2009

Jewish Religion after Theology ponders one of the most intriguing shifts in modern Jewish thought: from a metaphysical and theological standpoint toward a new manner of philosophizing based primarily on practice. Different chapters study this great shift and its various manifestations. The central figure of this new examination is Isaiah Leibowitz, whose thoughts encapsulate more than any other Jewish thinker this stance of religion without metaphysics. Sagi explores corresponding issues such as observance, the possibility of pluralism, the meaning of penance without messianic suppositions, and pragmatic coping with theodicy after the Holocaust, presenting the different possibilities within this great alteration in Jewish thought.

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

The Wisdom of Love: Man, Woman and God in Jewish Canonical Literature.
by Naftali Rothenberg
ISBN 978-1-934843-29-1
236 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: January, 2009

The Wisdom of Love strives to challenge the discrepancy between the way source texts relate to love and the way they are perceived to do so, introducing readers to the extensive, profound, and significant treatment of love in the Jewish canon. This is a book about love, not its repression; it is an opportunity to study the wisdom of love, not those who lack such wisdom and are unlikely to ever acquire it.

The Wisdom of Love brings about not only a change in perception—recognizing the existence of the wisdom of love per se—but also the realization that this wisdom is the very foundation of religious wisdom as a whole, rather than a peripheral branch of it. All love derives from a single source: love between man and woman. It is from this source that all other manifestations of love, such as love of God, love of wisdom, and love of one’s fellow, draw their meaning.

Review:

"Rabbi Dr. Naftali Rothenberg of the Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem explores another religious approach to these issues in The Wisdom of Love: Man, Woman and God in Jewish Canonical Literature. He finds that the Bible, Talmud, Midrash and halacha (Jewish law) devote considerable attention to love and that much of rabbinic tradition treats love’s spiritual and physical aspects without inhibition. His study exposes a cognitive dissonance between what the Jewish canon says and what we expect our holy texts to say. The book celebrates love as a classical rabbinic ideal, and it is as rare as it is refreshing: scholarly, yet eminently readable; spiritual, yet sober."
—Eugene Korn, Jewish Week, editor of Meorot-A Forum for Modern Orthodox Discourse and American director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Efrat, Israel.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Religious Zionism: History and Ideology.
by Dov Schwartz
ISBN 978-1-934843-25-3
160 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: January, 2009

Religious Zionism is a major component of contemporary Israeli society and politics. The author reviews the history of religious Zionism from both a historical and ideological-theological perspective. His basic assumption is that religious Zionism cannot be fully understood solely through a historical description, or even from social, political, and philosophical vantage points. This book is the first study on this subject to be published in English.

Review:

"This small book is a concise yet successful introduction into the history and worldview of religious Zionism. Schwartz begins his story in 1902, with the founding of the Mizrahi movement and its revolutionary "activism of pioneering and political variety foreign to the existing Torah world." The majority of the work is dedicated to the movement before 1948 and Israel's early years. When Schwartz does discuss more recent phenomenon, he tries to highlight how these represent shifts from classic religious Zionist belief. The chapters are short and accessible, and will serve lay readers well to get a valuable introduction into early religious Zionism... This is a valuable contribution to the growing literature in English on religious Zionism."
—Shlomo Brody, Tradition Online

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Jewish Peoplehood: Change and Challenge.
edited by Ezra Kopelowitz, Menachem Revivi
ISBN 978-1-934843-24-6
204 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: September, 2008

At a time when Jewish communities have become increasingly anxious about weakening Jewish identity, one response strategy is to engage with the concept of Jewish peoplehood as a social phenomenon, in its varied contexts and processes.

This volume represents the first in-depth effort to address the concept of Jewish peoplehood since the initial attempts of early-20th-century Jewish intellectuals Mordechai Kaplan and Salo Baron. Indeed, its substance goes far beyond the range of a contemporary academic anthology, constituting instead a dynamic think tank on the concept of Jewish peoplehood by bringing together intellectuals from France, Israel, the UK, and the United States. The collection offers both intellectual and practical frameworks for grappling with the policy outcomes of different understandings of the peoplehood concept, and contributors to this volume include noted figures from diverse walks of life: academic disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, a rabbi, a literary figure, and communal leaders.

Series: Out of the Series

A World Apart: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Nineteenth-Century Galicia.
by Joseph Margoshes, translated by Ira Robinson, edited by Simcha Fishbane, Ira Robinson
ISBN 978-1-934843-10-9
204 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: August, 2008

In 1936, Joseph Margoshes (1866-1955), a writer for the New York Yiddish daily Morgen Journal, published a memoir of his youth in Austro-Hungarian Galicia entitled Erinerungen fun mayn leben. In this autobiography, he evoked a world that had been changed almost beyond recognition as a result of the First World War and was shortly to be completely obliterated by the Holocaust. In telling his story, Margoshes gives the reader important insights into the many-faceted Jewish life of Austro-Hungarian Galicia. We read of the Orthodox and the Enlightened, urban and rural life, Jews and their gentile neighbors, and much more. This book is an important evocation of an entire Jewish society and civilization and bears comparison with Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk's masterful evocation of Jewish life in Poland, Poyln.

Reviews:

From the Religious Studies Review, June 2009

"This delightful memoir, written in Yiddish in the 1930s (and published in Yiddish in 1936), evokes life in Galicia and the author’s own personal saga. Eliezer Margoshes (1866-1955) was born in Lemberg (Lvov) and came to America at the turn of the century. In the States, he wrote for Yiddish newspapers. The book is rich in descriptions of traditional education, famous (and not so famous) rabbis, the process or modernization and change, as well as many topics relevant to social and cultural history. The picture Margoshes offers is honest, detailed, and with a little romanticization or sentimentality. The book is very well translated and preserves the flavor of the Yiddish original without sacrificing readability. The vivid descriptions of religious life make this a useful primary source, especially on Hasidic life, for students who are limited to English, and it can easily be used to illustrate more abstract theories and models. The index adds to the usefulness of the book."
—Shaul Stampfer, Hebrew University

"A World Apart is an absorbing and entertaining work as well as a matter-of-fact narrative full of gripping detail. It could doubtless also serve as a historical source although, like many memoirs, it has no scholarly apparatus. It is to be hoped that this historical narrative will find many readers eager to plunge into the rich and colourful cultural and ideological worlds of Eastern European Jewry before the Shoah."
—Desanka Schwara University of Bern, reviewed in East European Jewish Affairs

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Translating a Tradition: Studies in American Jewish History.
by Ira Robinson
ISBN 978-1-934843-06-2
332 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: July, 2008

Divided into three sections, this work explains how the concepts and practices of traditional European Judaism were adapted to North American culture beginning in the late nineteenth century. Part I focuses on the ideas and activities of Cyrus Adler (1863-1940), one of the most prominent leaders of the traditionalist United States Jewish community in his era. The issues in these essays include the origins of American Jewish history as a field of study, the Kehilla experiments of the early twentieth century, and the relationship between the Jewish Theological Seminary and Orthodox Judaism.

Part II deals with the beginnings of Hasidic Judaism in North America prior to the Second World War. It also includes several studies investigating the shaping of the worldview of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary North America. Part III examines the issue of contemporary American Jewish attitudes toward evolution and intelligent design.

Review:

From The American Jewish Archives Journal LXI, no. 2 (2009). 

"Translating a Tradition: Studies in American Jewish History is an engaging and important contribution to the field."
—David Weinfeld, originally from Montreal, Canada, is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Judaic studies and history at New York University. He received his bachelor’s cum laude in history from Harvard University in 2005.
  

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture.
by Eliezer Schweid, edited by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-05-5
292 pp. cloth
$60.00
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Publication Date: July, 2008

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of "Jewish culture." This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be "cultured" was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical "culture," with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a humanly- and not only divinely-mandated regime. The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel.

Review:

"…Schweid's work is a significant addition to the analysis of European Jewish thought in the modern period."
—Rabbi Josh Levy, Manna, Autumn 2009

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Time and Life Cycle in Talmud and Midrash: Socio-Anthropological Perspectives.
by Nissan Rubin
ISBN 978-1-934843-07-9
236 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

Focusing on the concepts of time and the life cycle, this collection of articles examines Jewish life in the Talmudic period through the lens of Jewish law and custom of the time. The essays are the work of Nissan Rubin (one of them written in collaboration with Admiel Kosman) and come together to present the cultural perspective of the sages and scholars who produced the stepping-stones of Jewish life and custom. By using a structural approach, Rubin is able to identify processes of long-term change in a society that remains largely traditional and stable. Symbolic analysis supplies an additional dimension to these studies, enabling the reader to experience the cultural subtexts.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Theological and Philosophical Premises of Judaism.
by Jacob Neusner
ISBN 978-1-934843-19-2
256 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

 Classical Judaism imagined the situation of the people of Israel to be unique among the nations of the earth in three aspects. The nations lived in unclean lands, contaminated by corpses and redolent of death. They themselves were destined to die without hope of renewed life after the grave. They were prisoners of secular time, subject to the movement and laws of history in its inexorable logic. Heaven did not pay attention to what they did and did not care about their conduct, so long as they observed the basic decencies mandated by the commandments that applied to the heirs of Noah, seven fundamental rules in all.

That is not how Israel the holy people was conceived. The Israel contemplated by Rabbinic Judaism lived in sacred space and in enchanted time, all the while subject to the constant surveillance of an eye that sees all, an ear that hears all, and a sentient being that recalls all. Why the divine obsession with Israel? God yearned for Israel’s love and constantly contemplated its conduct. The world imagined by the Rabbis situated Israel in an enchanted kingdom, a never-never land, and conceived of God as omniscient and ubiquitous.

Here Neusner shows that in its generative theology, Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age invoked the perpetual presence of God overseeing all that Israelites said and did. It conceived of Israel as transcending the movement of history and living in a perpetual present tense. Israel located itself in a Land like no other, and it organized its social order in a hierarchical structure ascending to the one God situated at the climax and head of all being.

Review:

"This is a learned and very detailed study…"
—Shmuel Ben-Gad, George Washington University, Washington, DC Review published in the May / June 2009 AJL Newsletter

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought.
by Isaac Heinemann, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-04-8
240 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

This classic work by early-20th-century Jewish humanist and scholar Isaac Heinemann surveys the crucial phases of Jewish thought concerning correct conduct as codified in the commandments. Heinemann provides his own systematic insights about the intellectual, emotional, pedagogical, and pragmatic reasoning advanced by the major Jewish thinkers.
This volume covers Jewish thinkers from the Bible, rabbis and Hellenistic philosophers through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including Saadiah, Halevi, Maimonides, Albo, and many others. Heinemann addresses such questions as: "What were the Biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern rationales offered for the commandments in the course of Jewish thought?"

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture: Philosophy of Biblical Narrative.
by Eliezer Schweid, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-00-0
224 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: January, 2008

The fundamental book of Eliezer Schweid is a modern interpretation of the Bible as narrative and law which can reopen the dialogue of contemporary Jews with the Bible, from which a dynamic Jewish culture can continue to draw its inspiration. The approach draws at the same time from the philosophical modernism of Hermann Cohen, the dialogical philosophy of Buber, the religious phenomenology of Heschel, and the insights of contemporary Biblical scholars, including literary analysts of the Bible. Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally—a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture: Philosophy of Biblical Law.
by Eliezer Schweid, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-01-7
216 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: January, 2008

Like Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise, Schweid helps us grasp the potential for seeing radically new messages in this oldest of books, the Bible. The American Founding Fathers realized that the Bible offers strong support for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Socially, it offers a message of egalitarianism, especially in the provisions of the Jubilee. It is hardly an accident that two modern political movements found mottos ready at hand from the 25th chapter of Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (engraved on the Liberty Bell), and “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity” (motto of the Jewish National Fund).

Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally—a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History