Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Changing Women, Changing Society.
by Dahlia Moore
ISBN 978-1-934843-84-0
250 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: February, 2012

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.

Review:
Delving into the historical realities of one specific society, Israel, Dahlia Moore enlarges our understanding of the interplay of ideologies and reality. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back presents an engaging and in-depth analysis of the forces that have sometimes fostered and more often impeded equality between the sexes in Israel. The book will provide fascinating reading to anyone who wishes to study the status of women – in Israel or around the world.
—Faye J. Crosby, Co-editor of Sex Discrimination in Employment

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Jewish Faith in a Changing World: A Modern Introduction to the World and Ideas of Classical Jewish Philosophy.
by Rafael Shucat
ISBN 978-1-936235-68-1
250 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: January, 2012

Ever since the first encounter between Judaism and the western world in the second century BCE, Jewish thinkers like Maimonides, Gersonides, R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, and Rabbi A. I. Kook have grappled with the issues of Jewish faith and modernity. The works they published, which comprise Jewish classical philosophy, were products of the highest intellectual caliber, and no question of faith, no matter how embarrassing or heretical, was overlooked. In this book Raphael Shuchat presents the reader with some of the main and timeless issues of Jewish philosophy over the ages and updates them to twenty-first century thinking, making each issue relevant for the modern reader. This book offers a fresh intellectual outlook on the Jewish faith, and contains a timely message for all religionists and thinkers in the twenty-first century.  It will be of great use to both students and laymen.

Review:

“Shuchat’s keen pedagogical skills are always in evidence.  This is a rich, thoughtful, and enjoyable introduction to Jewish philosophy, aimed at the general reader.”
—Zeev Harvey, chair of the Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Jews, Instructions for Use: Four Eighteenth-Century Projects for the Emancipation of European Jews.
by Paolo Bernardini, Diego Lucci
ISBN 978-1-936235-74-2
220 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: December, 2011

This book examines the four most important projects for Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century Europe. The essays presented in this volume analyze the proposal advanced by the freethinker John Toland in 1714 and three projects of the 1780s, formulated by the state official Christian Wilhelm von Dohm in Frederick the Great’s Prussia, the economist Count D’Arco in Mantua under Habsburg rule, and the Abbe Henri Gregoire in France on the eve of the Revolution. Focusing on the combination of humanitarian and utilitarian arguments and objectives in the proposals to redefine the legal and social status of the Jews, this book is a particularly useful resource for scholars and students interested in the history of Jewish-Gentile relations and the Age of Enlightenment.

Series: Out of the Series

Who is Afraid of Historical Redress: The Israeli Victim / Perpetrator Dichotomy.
by Ruth Amir
ISBN 978-1-934843-85-7
325 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: October, 2011

With the Holocaust resonating as the "thick background," historical redress processes in Israel render a particularly challenging case. The simultaneous concern the Jewish community has 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

Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism.
by Aryeh Cohen
ISBN 978-1-936235-64-3
160 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: September, 2011

Justice in the City argues, based on the Rabbinic textual tradition, especially the Babylonian Talmud, and utilizing French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ framework of interpersonal ethics, that a just city should be a community of obligation. That is, in a community thus conceived, the privilege of citizenship is the assumption of the obligations of the city towards Others who are not always in view—workers, the poor, the homeless. These Others form a constitutive part of the city. The second part of the book is a close analysis of homelessness, labor and restorative justice from within the theory that was developed. This title will be useful for scholars and students in Jewish Studies, especially Rabbinic Literature and Jewish Thought, but also for those interested in contemporary urban issues.

Review:

“This is an extremely important, interesting and creative project. Nothing like it really exists. Here is someone who combines erudition in the classical literature of Judaism (especially the Babylonian Talmud) with his passion for social justice, both as an activist and as someone who thinks in highly sophisticated terms about the tradition of political philosophy and of social theory inspired by religious traditions.”
—Charlotte Fonrobert, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University

Series: New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism

Denial of the Denial, or the Battle of Auschwitz: The Demography and Geopolitics of the Holocaust.
edited by Alfred Kokh, Pavel Polian
ISBN 978-1-936235-34-6
350 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: May, 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

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

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: April, 2011

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.
 
Reviews:

"Diane Kriger's theoretical foray into the thick of the debate on how to study the legal systems of antiquity, how to compare them, and how to distinguish external influences from internal development, will prove to be a landmark in academic discourse. The work is also a testament to her personal courage, integrity, and pursuit of justice."
—Harry Fox, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

"Diane Kriger's work offers a dynamic model of the range of female status from slave to free found in classical and late antiquity. Her legal training and her expertise in ancient law and rabbinics combine to demonstrate functional equivalence between legal systems, clarify legal oddities and promote a new theory of the transition from patrilineal to matrilineal decent in Jewish law."
—Tirzah Meacham, Deaprtment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto

"Diane Kriger's scholarship was meticulous and perceptive. Her unique academic background in both law and the ancient Near East provided her with unparalleled means to understand the alwa and the position of slave women in ancient Israel. Her work not only fills a vital space for studies in ancient Jewish law, but also has a place in the interpretation of modern Jewish law."
—Jennifer Hellum, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors Before World War I.
by Sara Libby Robinson
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.

Reviews:

"This fascinating and illuminating book shows clearly how the interest in vampirism which developed in Britain, France, and Germany in the three quarters of a century before the end of the Second World War was linked with the popularisation of a more ‘scientific’ understanding of the human body and the role of blood in it. This development was related both to fears about the advancement of women and to the development of new forms of antisemitism and the book thus makes a major contribution to the crisis of liberal values in the years between 1870 and 1945."
—Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University

"Sara Libby Robinson has written a book of remarkable range and erudition including sources from Europe and America.  She shows convincingly that the image of the vampire accompanied a wide variety of modern anxieties about blood.  We now know that Count Dracula was only the beginning of a much broader and more interesting story."
—David Biale, Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History Chair, Department of History University of California, Davis

Series: Out of the Series

Antisemitism 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: March, 2011

Antisemitism on the Campus: Past & Present, edited by Eunice G. Pollack, is the first book of a multidisciplinary series on Antisemitism in America to be published by Academic Studies Press. In this volume, twenty-one leading scholars explore the roots and manifestations of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and the efforts to combat them at American, British, and South African colleges and universities in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics such as antisemitism and anti-Zionism on individual campuses, in black militant groups, on the Far Left, and in academic organizations; students’ exposure to antisemitism and anti-Zionism through popular culture and the internet; discrimination against Jewish faculty, students and organizations; the anti-Israel boycott/divestment movement, among others, are covered.

Series: Anti-Semitism in America

Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews.
by David Berger
ISBN 978-1-936235-24-7
450 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: February, 2011

In Cultures in Collision and Conversation, David Berger addresses three broad themes in Jewish intellectual history:  Jewish approaches to cultures external to Judaism and the controversies triggered by this issue in medieval and modern times, the impact of Christian challenges and differing philosophical orientations on Jewish interpretation of the Bible, and Messianic visions, movements, and debates from antiquity to the present.  These essays include a monograph-length study of Jewish attitudes toward general culture in medieval and early modern times, analyses of the thought of Maimonides and Nahmanides, an assessment of the reactions to the most recent messianic movement in Jewish history, and reflections on the value of the academic study of Judaism.


Reviews:

"For decades, David Berger has been profoundly enriching our knowledge of the Jewish past and present. This new collection of essays exhibits Berger at his best. The essays are wide-ranging in time and space, are rich in knowledge and citation of the sources, are meticulous and convincing in their argumentation, and show a historian with deep warmth and empathy for the people—past and present—about whom he writes."
—Robert Chazan, S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University

"Berger’s wise and witty essays are at once learned and effervescent, balanced and engaged essential reading for anyone interested in the Jewish past and its (mis)uses, and a pleasure to read."
—Bernard Septimus, Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History and Sephardic Civilization, Harvard University

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Twilight of Reason: Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and Levinas Tested by the Catastrophe.
by Orietta Ombrosi
ISBN 978-1-936235-75-9
200 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: October, 2011

“Think of the disaster” is the first injunction of thought when faced with the disaster that struck European Jews during the period of Hitler’s rule. Thinking of the disaster means understanding why the Shoah was able to occur in civilized Europe, moulded by humane reason and the values of progress and enlightenment. It means thinking of a possibility for philosophy’s future.

Walter Benjamin, who wrestled with these problems ahead of time, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Emmanuel Levinas had the courage, the strength and the perception – and sometimes simply the desperation – to think about what had happened. Moved by indignation and the desire to testify, they felt the urgent need to address the cries of agony of Auschwitz’s victims in their thinking.

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Mysticism in Twentieth Century Hebrew Literature.
by Hamutal Bar-Yosef
ISBN 978-1-936235-01-8
300 pp. cloth
$69.00
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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.

Reviews:

"Professor Bar Yosef's monograph is the first comprehensive account of a major - though neglected - component of modern Hebrew literature, the impact of Kabbalistic and Hasidic themes. Their investigation is an important desideratum that is fulfilled here in an erudite and authoritative manner."
—Professor Moshe Idel, Hebrew University, and Hartman Institute, Jerusalem


“Research in the field of literature and culture has yet to address, in any meaningful way, the question of the place of mysticism within Hebrew literature, a topic deserving of study. There have been some local, exploratory forays into the question of the mystical nature of various experiences described and designed as such in the works of specific writers. But so far, there has been no comprehensive study done that paints an entire picture of the mood, the kind of mystical experiences and given the new avenues of research introduced to us by Bar-Yosef, the contemporary and current garb worn by these mystical experiences - not limited to what is termed “the religious experience,” but rather reaching new spheres of experience, such as the collective, the erotic, and new places where the designation of a mystical experience as such is itself one of the most salient characteristics of  mysticism in contemporary Hebrew literature.”
—Zvi Mark, Bar Ilan University

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Alternative and Bio-Medicine in Israel: Boundaries and Bridges.
by Emma Averbuch, Judith Shuval
9781936235865
245 pp. cloth
$72.00
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Publication Date: January, 2012

This book explores the macro and micro social contexts in which alternative and bio-medicine co-exist in Israel. It includes a history of alternative health care in Israel and analysis of current policies and dilemmas regarding different forms of health care. It provides an in-depth analysis of medical professionals who have added alternative health care to their repertoire of professional skills in their practice settings in hospitals and community clinics. The heterogeneity of patient populations in Israel makes it possible to explore attitudes of different cultural groups toward alternative health care: these include Jewish immigrants from different countries as well as Bedouin and other Arab groups. Since alternative medicine is a growing part of the overall health care system in many countries, the book provides insights gained from the Israeli experience regarding its co-existence along with conventional medicine - to a broad spectrum of health professionals, policy makers and laypersons.

Review:

"No authors are better positioned than Shuval and Averbach to explore the boundaries and bridges between alternative and biomedicine. They have spent over ten years examining the ways in which these two disparate forms of health care have managed to co-exist in Israel.
With a solid theoretical framework and historical perspective, the book explores the diverse forms of co-existence that have emerged in their country between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and the biomedical model. These include studies of nurses and midwives practicing CAM, as well as physicians who regularly incorporate it into their treatments. Other Israeli colleagues contribute significantly to the empirical research.
The book will be a critical source for scholars seeking to understand the social processes underlying the current challenges to the previous dominance of the medical profession and the transformation of the health care system."
—Merrijoy Kelner

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

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

The Pale God examines the relationship between secularism and religious tradition. It begins with a description of the secular options as expressed by Israeli intellectuals, and describes how these options have led to a dead end.  A new option must be sought, and one of the key sources for this option is the works of Spinoza. The author explains that unlike Nietzsche, who discussed "the death of God," 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. The author demonstrates that the secular option is inherent in Israeli society, fits the type of secularism that Zionism instilled in the Jewish people, and complements the traditional trends deeply rooted in that society.  

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

The Teachings of Maimonides.
9781618111487
310 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: October, 2011

This groundbreaking book was among the most important of those that presented the teachings of Maimonides, as represented by his many published works, as a unified whole, thus bringing about a renaissance in the study of this seminal scholar. The author states, in his original introduction, that “the spirit which animated [Maimonides’] mind and pervades his writings is as much needed now as ever before.” Academic Studies Press is proud to make this important work once again available in printed form.

Series: Classics in Judaica

Creating the Chupah: The Zionist Movement and the Drive for Jewish Communal Unity in Canada, 1898-1921.
by Henry Srebrnik
ISBN 978-1-936235-71-1
225 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: September, 2011

Creating the Chupah assesses the role of Canadian Zionist organizations in the drive for communal unity within Canadian Jewry in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Two strands of Zionism, represented respectively by the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada and Poale Zion, were often involved in conflicts that reflected greater disputes. The book also describes Zionist activities within the larger spectrum of Canadian Jewish life. Montreal was at the time the “capital” of Canadian Jewry, but the Jewish communities of Toronto and Winnipeg also play a significant role in these events. By providing a detailed historical examination of the early Canadian Zionist movement, the book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of 20th century Jewish life in Canada.

Series: Jews in Space and Time

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

Review:

"When it comes to Mordecai Kaplan, Jack Cohen is the teacher of us all. There is much misunderstanding of Kaplan, with people usually identifying him solely with the basic concepts of his system. Jack Cohen, Kaplan’s most knowledgeable disciple, goes beyond the basics and in this new work gives us a sense of Kaplan’s depth and uniqueness. He offers us the full range of Kaplan’s thought while concentrating on his theology, his Zionism and the similarities between his system and that of the great mystic Abraham Isaac Kook. Few people understand the Kook-Kaplan connection the way Jack Cohen does. Kaplan’s attitude toward Eretz Yisrael is provocatively idiosyncratic and still extremely valuable for anyone who thinks about Israel in all its complexity. There is no one who knows Kaplan’s Zionism better than Jack Cohen. The most valuable aspect of this work is that Cohen knew Kaplan first hand over a long period of time and gives us a vivid sense of Kaplan the man. For long-time Kaplan supporters and for neophytes, this book offers a wonderful in-depth summation of Kaplan’s ideology." 
—Mel Scult, Professor Emeritus in Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual 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
402 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: October, 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 biblically covenanted 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.

Reviews:

"Prof. Monty Noam Penkower has once again presented readers with a fascinating volume that focuses on a pivotal period in the modern Jewish experience. With chapters ranging from the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, through an exploration of figures of secular and religious Jewish stature in the United States such as Justice Felix Frankfurter and Rabbi Abraham Selmanowitz, and up to a discussion of controversial political activists in Palestine such as Haim Arlosoroff and Shlomo Ben-Yosef, Penkower keeps readers spellbound with the depth and breadth of his knowledge. Drawing on archival material found on three continents, he has created a multidimensional picture of Jewish life in Europe, the United States and Israel during the first decades of the twentieth century, and captured the essence of the social, political, religious and economic dilemmas which world Jewry faced during those fateful years. He introduces us to the protagonists of his story in an extremely readable fashion, and skillfully guides us through their deliberations and decisions, giving us a sense of being privy to the behind-the-scenes activities in all cases. Reading this book is a must for anyone interested in understanding some of the complexities of the Jewish twentieth century experience."
—Judy Baumel-Schwartz, Chair of the Graduate Program in Contemporary Jewry, Department of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University

"Twentieth Century Jews portrays critical movements and leading personages in the era's two fastest growing centers of Jewish life. It illuminates both the issues that shaped Jews in America and Israel, and the great questions that continue to divide them."
—Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University

Reviews:

Twentieth Century Jews” takes the long way around the identity journey — the book is a congeries of essays on a range of topics, each one very different from the other — and it’s well worth the trip…The portraits in “Twentieth Century Jews” develop a neat point-counterpoint of the narrative of American secularization and assimilation that were the byproducts of American “freedom” and of the political and ideological cholent that characterized the yishuv. Collectively, Penkower’s rich portraits give the reader a larger picture: that of the tensions and interactions — political, cultural and religious — that contoured Jewish identity in the new, “post-European,” dispensations of Jewish life.

-Excerpt from Building the Perfect Beast: Constructing Jewish and Israeli Identity in the 20th Century by Jerome A. Chanes. Published in The Forward, April 13, 2011.

Read the full review here: http://www.forward.com/articles/136981/

"Penkower focuses on a handful of notable individuals to highlight the ways in which Jewish identity became increasingly complex as the 20th century progressed: Hayim Nahman Bialik, the Jewish national bard; Abraham Selmanovitz, who emigrated to the New World to found a vibrant, Orthodox community that enshrined the values and customs of the Old; Haim Arlosoroff, the brilliant political moderate whose assassination in Tel Aviv in 1933 blighted the course of Zionism; Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court judge, one of the highest placed Jews in America after 1939; and Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, an ardent anti-Zionist, who refused to appoint Jews to leading posts on the paper or print the full names of his Jewish contributors, and who was responsible for "grossly" muting the Times' coverage of Nazi atrocities.

At times, these lives overlap but, singularly or jointly, they powerfully portray the cultural, political and religious tensions that transformed Jews and Jewish identity on both sides of the Atlantic."




Excerpt from The Jewish Chronicle Online, by Rebecca Abrams

Read the full review here: http://www.thejc.com/arts/books/44290/twentieth-century-jews-forging-identity-land-promise-and-promised-land

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Aggadah and its Interpretation.
by Yosef Tabory
ISBN 978-1-936235-79-7
400 pp. cloth
$89.00
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Publication Date: December, 2011

This volume contains fifteen articles, many in Hebrew, by leading scholars. The articles cover a broad range of subjects, from an analysis of biblical narratives as expounded in the midrash and by medieval commentators, through a discussion of Maimonides’ attitude towards midrash and an analysis of talmudic aggadah as expounded by oriental scholars, to polemics concerning the attitude to aggadah in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and culminating with an analysis of interpretation of aggadah by latter-day talmudic scholars. There are also articles about the essence of aggadah, its literary conventions and its relation to law, and two articles which deal with a passage in the Passover Haggadah. The participants include: E. Eizenman, N. Ilan, G. Blidstein, Y. Blau, M. Bregman, A. Grossman, H. Davidson, C. Horowitz, O. Viskind-Elper, H. Mak, A. Atzmon, A. Kadari, A. Rozenak, M. Shmidman, and J. Tabory.

Series: Out of the Series

The Shtiebelization of Modern Jewry: Studies in Custom and Ritual in the Judaic Tradition: Social-Anthropological Perspectives.
by Simcha Fishbane
ISBN 978-1-936235-77-3
280 pp. cloth
$75.00
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Publication Date: September, 2011

Custom and ritual, or their Hebrew equivalent, minhag, have intrigued rabbis and scholars for generations. The majority of the rabbinical works devoted to minhag primarily encompass lists of sources and reporting of old and new customs. Some have explored the historical development of the minhag. Here, Simcha Fishbane treats minhag from a socio-anthropological perspective.  The Shtiebelization of Modern Jewry discusses the theory and model of minhagim using the Mishnah Berurah and the Arukh Hashulkhan, analyzes rabbinic texts concerned with custom, and describes current rituals from a socio-anthropological viewpoint.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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: August, 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

Maimonides as a Biblical Interpreter.
by Sara Klein-Braslavy
ISBN 978-1-936235-28-5
260 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: June, 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.

Review:

"Sara Klein-Braslavy is one of our generation's pre-eminent interpreters of Maimonides. This volume makes available to the English reader a selection of her pioneering studies on Maimonides as interpreter of the Bible and on his art of writing. Professor Klein-Braslavy's  important work is thus made available to a much wider audience and makes a substantial contribution to the reader's understanding of this crucial figure."
—Menachem Kellner

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Life in Transit: Jews in Postwar Lodz, 1945-1950.
by Shimon Redlich
ISBN 978-1-936235-21-6
300 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: October, 2010

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.

Reviews:

"Focusing on the city of Lodz, but with a far wider span, this is one of the most impressive books on the Holocaust and its aftermath that I have read."
—Martin Gilbert, author of The Holocaust, The Jewish Tragedy

“This remarkable combination of memoir and history is a continuation of the prize-winning book Together and Apart in Brezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, 1919-1945 (Bloomington, 2002), which described the author’s experiences as a boy before and during the Second World War. Life in Transit depicts his emigration with his family after the war to the largely undamaged town of Lodz, then the principal concentration of Jews in Poland. It provides a moving picture both of this community’s attempt to rebuild the shattered world of Polish Jewry and of the author’s own experiences as he came gradually to see that he has no future in Poland and thus decides to emigrate to Israel.”
—Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University

“This book is both a moving personal account of childhood in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and a highly valuable account of Jewish life in Lodz in the early postwar years. Chronologically following in the footsteps of Redlich's extraordinary study of the town of Brzezany in Eastern Galicia during the German occupation, Life in Transit is filled with important insights into the identity of Jewish survivors, their varying wartime experiences and stories of survival, and, not least, the education of a new generation of child survivors, who in large part went on to build new lives for themselves across the globe. This book is certain to become essential reading for all those interested in life after genocide.”
—Omer Bartov, Brown University, and author of Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine

Series: Jews of Poland

Zionist Arabesques: Modern Landscapes, Non-Modern Texts.
by Hadas Yaron
ISBN 978-1-934843-78-9
250 pp. cloth
$55.00
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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

"A most subtle and penetrating ethnographic study of transformations in land, nature, and agriculture in Israel in light of the expropriation of Palestinian villages. A crucial, imaginatively researched contribution." 
—Yael Navaro-Yashin, Senior Lecturer, University of Cambridge

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy.
by Yoel Finkelman
ISBN 978-1-936235-37-7
250 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: August, 2011

For centuries, fervently observant Jewish communities have produced thousands of works of Jewish law, thought, and spirituality. But in recent decades, the literature of America's Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] community has taken on brand-new forms: self-help books, cookbooks, monthly magazines, parenting guides, biographies, picture books, even adventure stories and spy novels -- all produced by Haredi men and women for the Haredi reader. What's changed? Why did these works appear, and what do they mean to the community that produces and consumes them? How has the Haredi world, as it seeks fidelity to unchanging tradition, so radically changed what it writes and what it reads? In answering these questions, Strictly Kosher Reading points to a central paradox in contemporary Haredi life. Haredi Jewry sets itself apart, claiming to reject modern secular culture as dangerous and as threatening to everything Torah stands for. But in practice, Haredi popular literature reveals a community thoroughly embedded in contemporary values. Popular literature plays a critical role in helping Haredi Jews to understand themselves as different, even as it shows them to be very much the same.

Series: Jewish Identity in Post Modern Society

The Muselmann at the Water Cooler: A Study of Survival in Extreme and Day-to-Day Situations: The Inside View of a Holocaust Survivor.
by Eli Pfefferkorn
ISBN 978-1-936235-66-7
300 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: May, 2011

A survivor of concentration camps and the Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn looks back on his Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences to compare patterns of human behavior in extremis with those of ordinary life.  What he finds is that the concentration camp Muselmann, who has lost his hunger for life and is thus shunned by his fellow inmates on the soup line, bears an eerie resemblance to an office employee who has fallen from grace and whose coworkers avoid spending time with him at the water cooler.  Though the circumstances are unfathomably far apart, the human response to their situations is triggered by self-preservation rather than by calculated evil. By juxtaposing these two separate worlds, Pfefferkorn demonstrates that ultimately the human condition has not changed significantly since Cain slew Abel and the Athenians sentenced Socrates.

Reviews:

''Pfefferkorn's experience and his memoir about it are both unusual in the field of Holocaust studies.  He experienced the Shoah and survived it, played a crucial role in the establishment of the United States Holocaust Museum, and has made substantial academic contributions as well. His memoir is well done, and will make an important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies.''
—John K. Roth, Edward Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College 

“Pfefferkorn has a lively style and a fascinating story to tell: his insights and his perspectives deserve a wide audience.”
—Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill and author of The Second World War (Weidenfeld and Holt, 1989) 

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

"Henry Srebrnik’s book, Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924-1951, is a richly detailed study of a fascinating, often neglected chapter in the history of the Jewish communist movement in the United States. In this meticulously researched book, Srebrnik thoroughly chronicles the world of the Jewish communist and pro-Soviet subculture that was established in the United States in 1920s until its demise in the early 1950s, drawing from an array of primary and archival sources in order to provide the reader with a sense of the 'lived experience' of the adherents and participants of the Jewish communist movement.  Srebrnik’s in-depth account conveys a sense of the utopian ideals that drove many Jews, communist and non-communist, as well as many non-Jewish supporters, to look to the Siberian province of Birobidzhan as a territorial solution to the Jewish national problem.  His main accomplishment, perhaps, is the extent to which he shows just how active and persistent this movement was in its support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Birobidzhan.  Srebrnik’s scholarship sheds new light on our understanding of the Jewish communist movement in North America and the larger network of supporters of the Soviet Union in the years before the Cold War. 
—Matthew Hoffman, Associate Professor, Judaic Studies & History, Franklin & Marshall College
 


Series: Jewish Identity in Post Modern Society

Wandering Jew in America.
by Uzi Rebhun
ISBN 978-1-936235-26-1
154 pp. cloth
$60.00
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Publication Date: June, 2011

Uzi Rebhun provides the reader with a thorough description and analysis of the multifaceted nature of Jewish internal migration in the United States. Using data from the 1990 and 2000 NJPS, and through up-to-date approaches in the social sciences, he traces changes in the levels, directions, and types of Jewish migration, evaluating the changing social and economic characteristics of the migrants. Finally, Rebhun tests the relationships between migration and Jewish behavior in both the private and public spheres, his findings contributing to the theoretical literature on internal migration and to a better understanding of American ethnicity. The Wandering Jew in America is an excellent resource for students of migration, ethnicity, and sociology of religion as well as those interested in Jewish life in America.

Reviews:

"In The Wandering Jew, Uzi Rebhun has presented the definitive work on American Jews' geographic mobility for our time. Although comprehensive and rich with intriguing data analyses, his prose style makes the exploration of this important dimension of Jewish life readily available, acessible, and engaging. He contends not only with the prevailing theories and images of Jewish mobility, but also discerns fascinating changes over time in the patterns of mobility, in the characteristics of movers and stayers, and in the implications of mobility for Jewish identity and community."
—Steven M. Cohen, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

"Uzi Rebhun documents changes in the wanderlust of American Jews up through 2001. His research, grounded in current theoretical frameworks, enables us to consider how Jews are similar to and different from other migrants within the United States. Rebhun concludes that American Jews are characterized by increasing and unusually high spatial mobility, which has resulted in high levels of both individual and institutional dispersion. Rebhun spells out the implications of his findings in terms of theoretical insights and suggested directions for future research, as well as for Jewish communal policy.

Rebhun has invested considerable skill in making his scientifically sound and sophisticated analyses, mostly based on the 1990 and 2000-1 Natinal Jewish Population Surveys, very accessible to all readers. Sure to be considered the definitive text on American Jewish spatial mobility for this time period, this work in highly recommended as worthwhile for scholars (of religion, ethnicity, and Jewish studies) and practitioners alike, as well anyone interested in the development of the contemporary American Jewry."
—Harriet Hartman, Professor of Sociology, Rowan University President, Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

The Jewish Conundrum in World History.
by Alexander Militarev
ISBN 978-1-934843-43-7
250 pp. cloth
$59.00
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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 a comparative context. In highlighting the unique and disproportionately great Jewish contributions, and the recent Russian Jewish contribution in particular, to 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. 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, and the thrill of the chase after the enigma’s solution.

Reviews:

"This remarkable and thought-provoking work, by one of the leading figures in the scholarly revival of Jewish studies in the former Soviet Union is a sustained reflection on the course of Jewish history and of the impact of the Jews over the past millennia on wider developments. It is one of the most fascinating reflections on this vital topic to appear in recent times."
—Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"A Russian-educated linguist and cultural anthropologist, Alexander Militarev offers in this elegantly written study a novel approach to address the 'conundrum' posed by the prominence of the Jews in the unfolding of humanistic cosmopolitan culture. With prodigious erudition, yet with manifest humanity and no small measure of humor, he probes the deep structures of what he calls the 'Adamic universalism' inscribed in the biblical lexicon and worldview and which, he argues, continue to inform the cognitive reflexes and ethical sensibilities of Jewish intellectuals.
—Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought, Divinity School, The University of Chicago; Professor Emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Torah in the Observatory: Gersonides, Maimonides, Song of Songs.
by Menachem Kellner
ISBN 978-1-934843-80-2
376 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: July, 2010

Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Ralbag, Gersonides; 1288-1344), one of medieval Judaism's most original thinkers, wrote about such diverse subjects as astronomy, mathematics, Bible commentary, philosophical theology, "technical" philosophy, logic, Halakhah, and even satire. In his view, however, all these subjects were united as part of the Torah. Influenced profoundly by Maimonides, Gersonides nevertheless exercised greater rigor than Maimonides in interpreting the Torah in light of contemporary science, was more conservative in his understanding of the nature of the Torah's commandments, and was more optimistic about the possibility of wide-spread philosophical enlightenment.

Gersonides was a witness to several crucial historical events, such as the expulsion of French Jewry of 1306 and the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy.  Collaborating with prelates in his studies of astronomy and mathematics, he had an entree into the Papal court at Avignon.  Revered among Jews as the author of a classic commentary on the latter books of the Bible, Kellner portrays Gersonides, r evered among Jews as the author of a classic commentary on the latter books of the Bible, as a true Renaissance Man, whose view of Torah is vastly wider and more open than that held by many of those who treasure his memory.

Reviews:

"Professor Kellner is one of the more productive and creative scholars in medieval Jewish thought. Over the years he has published many important essays on various aspects of medieval Jewish philosophy, especially on Gersonides and Maimonides. These studies are fundamental readings for any student of medieval Jewish philosophy. This anthology of his writings is a most valuable contribution to our understanding of these two thinkers."
—Seymour Feldman, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Rutgers University

"Gersonides (1288-1344) was, in my view, the most original philosopher in medieval Judaism. However, he has not been studied to the same extent as other Judaic luminaries, and only his Commentary on the Song of Songs has been (magnificently!) translated into English (1998), after an excellent Hebrew edition of the Introduction was published (1989), both the work of Menachem Kellner. This new volume by Menachem Kellner explores some of the most important questions raised by Gersonides: Providence, Mosaic Prophecy, Miracles, the Messiah and Resurrection, Astronomy and Metaphysics, Politics and Perfection… It is not by chance that Menachem Kellner has devoted so much to the study of Gersonides. Like Gersonides, Kellner has firmly in hand the knowledge of the Bible and of the traditional literature of Judaism, he is well trained in philosophy and science, and his broad interests make him the best and most penetrating champion of a great philosopher and an outstanding student of human thought."
—Colette Sirat, directeur d’etudes a l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes,Sorbonne et chercheur associe a l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (CNRS, Paris)
                                        

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

New Directions in Anglo-Jewish History.
by Geoffrey Alderman
ISBN 978-1-936235-13-1
208 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: July, 2010

The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable renaissance in the academic study of the history of the Jews in Great Britain and of their impact upon British history. In this volume Professor Geoffrey Alderman presents essays that reflect the richness of this renaissance, penned by a new generation of British and American scholars who are uninhibited by the considerations of communal image and public obligation that once exercised a powerful influence on Anglo-Jewish historiography. History does not have lessons, says Alderman, but it may provide signposts, and he adds that in the case of the essays presented here “I believe there is one signpost that we would all do well to ponder: in multicultural Britain hard-working immigrants may be welcome, or they may be feared – or both. They are destined to remain not quite British, and, for better or worse, they are destined to bequeath this otherness to the generations that follow them."

Reviews:

"The essays in this neatly edited volume provide exciting new insights into Anglo-Jewish history. They represent the second generation of critical scholarship on the subject matter and are united in their innovative and subtle nature. Topics as varied as literature, film and orphanages are explored in essays that range in chronology from the mid-Victorian era through to the eve of the Second World War. They break through barriers of history from above and below, of history and culture, and of Jewish and non-Jewish responses, providing critical perspectives on new and old topics alike. Taken together they represent the coming of age of the study of Anglo-Jewry, a subject matter until recently sadly ignored in British as well as Jewish historiography."
—Professor Tony Kushner, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton

"This excellent collection is the advance guard of the second wave of scholarly research into the Jewish experience in Britain since the predominance of gifted amateurs ended in the 1980s. It is multi-disciplinary, wide ranging, conceptually sophisticated, full of irony and frequently witty. There are no apologetics here. With these mainly young scholars, who hail from a variety of backgrounds, British Jewish history has reached maturity. The results are fascinating, sometimes shocking, but always illuminating."
—David Cesarani is research professor in History at Royal Holloway, University of London

"This valuable collection of essays by new scholars in the field of Anglo-Jewish history is a welcome addition.  The essays introduce topics that have received little attention hitherto - such as immigrant identity in the provices at the turn of the century and emigre Jews in the British film industry in the 1930s - as well as question conventional historical views - such as the belief that the response of the Board of Deputies to British fascism was weak and ineffective."
—Todd M. Endelman, William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History University of Michigan

Series: Out of the Series

Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second-Generation Religious Zionist Settlers.
by David C. Jacobson
ISBN 978-1-934843-72-7
250 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: May, 2011

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 their poetry, 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 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.

Review:

"In lucid writing and armed with depths of understanding and knowledge, David C. Jacobson leads his reader into an exploration of Jewish thought rooted in the teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook and his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and their disciples. Against this background, Jacobson explains the framework of the new poetic phenomenon which has grown at the very heart of the religious Zionist community, an ideological and political movement which largely held back from poetic activity from its inception. The writer invites his reader, indeed all of us, to a challenging experience – of thought and poetry blended together."
—Avinoam Rosenak, Professor of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

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
242 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: May, 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 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.

Reviews:

"Well-documented with an impressive bibliography, Anat Helman's book, A Coat of Many Colors, is an easy-to-read account and analysis of dress fashions among Israel's immigrants and residents in the country's first years. I enjoyed this book very much—it's fun to read and clearly demonstrates how clothing and dress are integral aspects of social and cultural history."
—Joanne B. Eicher, Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion

"With her superb eye for detail and her ability to tell a good story well, Anat Helman has produced a marvelous history of the State of Israel's early days by studying its clothing culture. Through this approach Helman tells the history of the fledgling state's economy, illuminates the values of the kibbutz movement, the military, the government and Israeli private life and reveals much about gender roles and the East-West ethnic encounter and does so by examining the dress codes each of these spheres promoted and the ideological underpinnings for such choices. A Coat of Many Colors allows us to read Israeli culture in its formative phase in an entirely new light. This is cultural history at its finest and establishes Anat Helman as one of the most interesting and path-breaking historians of her generation."
—John Efron, Koret Professor of Jewish History, University of California-Berkeley

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations.
by David Berger
ISBN 978-1-934843-76-5
450 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: May, 2010

Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue follows the interaction between Jews and Christians through the ages in all its richness, complexity, and diversity.  This collection of essays analyzes anti-Semitism, perceptions of the Other, and religious debates in the Middle Ages and proceeds to consider modern and contemporary interactions, which are marked by both striking continuity and profound difference.  These include controversies among historians, the promise and challenge of interfaith dialogue, and the explosive exchanges surrounding Mel Gibson’s film on the passion.  This volume will engage scholars, students, and any reader intrigued by one of the longest and most fraught inter-group relationships in history.

Review:

“Few bring to the subject of Jewish-Christian relations the singular blend of insight, erudition, and passion that characterizes David Berger’s Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue; and few collections of essays constitute as coherent and accessible an introduction to a difficult subject as this volume certainly does.  Professor Berger’s studies of the major issues in the encounter between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages, in the way that modern writers have understood that encounter, and in that encounter’s enduring impact on Jewish-Christian interaction today reflect keen critical scholarship on the one hand, and a resolute commitment to Jewish tradition on the other.  Without compromising either, Berger boldly addresses the thorniest, most sensitive of issues – from the Crusades to the blood libels to the supersessionism of the present pope – with candor, fairness, and wit.  No reader, of whatever faith or critical disposition, will leave this book unrewarded.”
—Jeremy Cohen, Abraham and Edita Spiegel Family Foundation Professor of European Jewish History, Tel Aviv University

"This masterful collection of essays is vintage David Berger – thoughtful, erudite, engaged, broad and insightful. Trained as a medievalist, specializing in the Jewish-Christian debate, Prof. Berger demonstrates that to understand the present relation between the two religions, one must go back in history and see what lessons can be derived from the past. Published over the course of a long career, these articles have stood the test of time and retain their vitality and liveliness, providing a model of careful and independent thinking on oftentimes sensitive subjects."
—Daniel J. Lasker, Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Holy Russia, Sacred Israel: Jewish-Christian Encounters in Russian Religious Thought.
by Dominic Rubin
ISBN 978-1-934843-79-6
570 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: June, 2010

Holy Russia, Sacred Israel examines how Russian religious thinkers, both Jewish and Christian, conceived of Judaism, Jewry and the ‘Old Testament’ philosophically, theologically and personally at a time when the Messianic element in Russian consciousness was being stimulated by events ranging from the pogroms of the 1880s, through two Revolutions and World Wars, to exile in Western Europe. An attempt is made to locate the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian, Russian and Western, Gnostic-pagan and Orthodox elements in Russian thought in this period. The author reflects personally on how the heritage of these thinkers – little analyzed or translated in the West – can help Orthodox (and other) Christians respond to Judaism (including ‘Messianic Judaism’), Zionism, and Christian anti-Semitism today.

Reviews:

"Dominic Rubin's Holy Russia, Sacred Israel is a formidable and profoundly impressive piece of research, which needed to be done, and I was very glad to see it. It is a major piece of work."
—Most Reverend. Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

“Holy Russia, Sacred Israel is without a doubt a very important book and contribution to the field. With a deep and sympathetic understanding for both Judaism and Russian Orthodoxy, Dominic Rubin gives us new readings of some of the canonical figures of Russian thought: Soloviev, Florensky, Rozanov, Gershenzon, Karsavin, and Fedotov, among others. This is an important book for Russian culture because the author has no axe to grind and is unafraid of telling truth to power, facing both past anti-Jewish agitation and propaganda, while at the same time never surrendering hope for a future Russian-Jewish philosophical dialogue. Each figure is judged primarily on the merits of their thinking as theology and as humane expression, in a way which displays erudition, tolerance and a love for both Russian and Jewish culture.”
—Brian Horowitz, Professor of Russian and Chair of Jewish Studies, Tulane University

“This is a truly exceptional book. I have reread chapters time and again. In these pages, there are so many things of immediate interest, mainly, I think, for Orthodox theologians and Church leaders. The presentation and commentary on landmark figures like Soloviev, Bulgakov, Berdyaev and Florensky will be of great benefit in helping Orthodox Christians in the twenty first century understand in depth the past relationship between Christianity and Judaism in the Orthodox context, during a period that was of crucial importance for both faiths. Very few people are aware of the details of this relationship, and this book is invaluable in assessing how today’s Orthodox Christians can learn from the past.”
—Fr. Vasile Mihoc, Professor of New Testament Studies, Lucien Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Answering a Question with a Question. Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Jewish Thought.
edited by Lewis Aron, Libby Henik
ISBN 978-1-934843-37-6
425 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: May, 2010

In the Jewish tradition, it is incumbent upon every generation to attempt to find meaning in its history. Meaning is co-created within the context of the inter-subjective field of a meeting of minds. Psychoanalysis, in some respects like the Jewish tradition from which it emerged, represents a body of thought about man’s relation to himself and to others, and places great value on the influence of memory, narrative, and history in creating meaning within the dyadic relationship of analyst and patient. In Answering a Question with a Question: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Jewish Thought, editors Aron and Henik have brought together an international collection of contemporary scholars and clinicians to address the interface and the mutual influence of Jewish thought and modern psychoanalysis.

Reviews:

"Long overdue, this sumptuous anthology of recent writings on the multiple interconnections between Judaism and contemporary psychoanalysis is endlessly illuminating. The range is indeed broad, from theology (God, of course), to biblical narratives (the Garden of Eden narrative), to ritual (shiva) on one side, and from Freud (of course) to Winnicott and Stephen Mitchell on the other. The scholarship is both impeccable and accessible to the general reader. A major contribution to both fields."
—Dr. Neil Gillman, Aron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Emeritus Professor, of Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

"Freud famously had one foot in fin de siecle Vienna and the other in the world of his fellow Jews. His ambivalence about the gap between the Greco-Christian intellectual tradition of secular Vienna and his own Rabbinic tradition has been amply explored and documented. In this rich and original book, Aron and Henik bring these issues into the present. In keeping with relational and post-modern precepts, their effort is dialogic and intertextual; that is, it is not about Freud’s dilemma, but rather about exploring and extending contemporary mutual influences. Brilliant and enlightening, this book represents a wide and impressive spectrum of scholarship and will be of great value to anyone interested in the interface between Judaism, psychoanalysis and culture. So, what’s not to like?"
—Edgar Levenson, MD Fellow Emeritus, Training and Supervisory Analyst and Faculty, William Alanson White Institute

"Lewis Aron and Libby Henik have edited a fresh and intellectually challenging collection of essays. Each contributor has original insights into the history and practice of psychoanalysis, the fascinating question of Freud’s Jewishness, and the role of psychoanalysis in modern Jewish self-understanding.”
—Susannah Heschel, Eli Black" Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

Vixens Disturbing Vineyards: The Embarrassment and Embracement of Scriptures - A Festschrift Honoring Harry Fox LeBeit Yoreh.
edited by Aubrey Glazer, Justin Lewis, Miryam Segal, Tzemah Yoreh
ISBN 978-1-934843-41-3
720 pp. cloth
$88.00
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Publication Date: April, 2010

Embarrassment and embracement are two moments in the reading, misreading and re-reading of scriptures, defined broadly to include both canonical and non-canonical texts. Despite what Harold Bloom calls our "belatedness" in this process, every reading community has its way of confronting that moment of embarrassment so as to re-embrace or reject its implications. These implications are especially strong in religious cultures with a nomian tradition. By entering into that very tension between what Fox calls embarrassment and re-embracement, every reader recognizes the anxiety of a narrative's influence upon a community. Papers dealing with different aspects of this phenomenon are part of a festschrift honoring Professor Harry Fox (LeBeit Yoreh) the originator of this seminal idea in the transmission of texts. Contributors include such scholars as Yaakov Elman, Simcha Fishbane, the late Chana Safrai and Tirzah Meacham as well as many students, colleagues and friends of Professor Fox.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

Judaism in a Post-Halakhic Age.
by Jack J. Cohen
ISBN 978-1-93484-392-5
235 pp. cloth
$35.00
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Publication Date: March, 2010

Judaism in a Post-Halakhic Age tackles the following questions: 1.What is Halakhah, and what role has it played in the creative survival of the Jewish people for two millennia? 2. Why is Halakhah no longer capable of functioning as it has until now? 3. What sort of polity and religious culture can be recommended to replace the Halakhic tradition in an era of freedom, democracy, scientific research and religious pluralism?  The author, however, out of his great respect for Halakhic culture, asks what it can still contribute to Jewish civilization and the advance of a united humanity.

Review:

"Venerable Reconstructionist thinker Jack Cohen here offers a thoughtful, balanced, and morally sensitive viewpoint on the place of halakhah in a contemporary Judaism.  His well-reasoned positions will have to be taken seriously as non-Orthodox Jews both in Israel and the diaspora struggle with this key issue."
—Art Green, Irving Brudnick Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Hebrew College

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

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

Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies and Moral Theories.
by Geoffrey Alderman, David Shatz
ISBN 978-1934843-42-0
480 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: January, 2010

This carefully crafted collection of essays, Jewish Thought in Dialogue offers creative interpretations of major Jewish texts and as well as original treatments of significant issues in Jewish theology and ethics. The collection includes philosophical readings of biblical narratives, analyses of topics in the thought of Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and critical and constructive examinations of divine providence, religious anthropology, free will, 9/11, evil, Halakhah and morality, altruism, autonomy in Jewish medical ethics, and the epistemology of religious belief. The author frequently brings Jewish philosophy and law into dialogue with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy.  The book serves scholars and students of Jewish philosophy and law and is suitable for inclusion in syllabi of undergraduate and graduate courses.

Reviews:

"A penetrating, keenly argued, profoundly wise, and often witty collection of essays by one of today's foremost Jewish philosophers."
—Warren Zev Harvey, Chair, Department of Jewish Thought, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"David Shatz is an excellent analytic philosopher who has also written extensively on Jewish philosophy. His articles do not merely contribute to understanding Jewish thinkers and thought. They also serve to broaden the philosophy of religion, making important issues and thinkers accessible and relevant to scholars working in other traditions. The essays will enhance scholarly appreciation of the philosophical dimensions of religious law, in a field  that largely ignores or marginalizes law's role in religion. This collection is particularly welcome and will contribute valuably to a broader discussion."
—Wayne Proudfoot, Professor of Religion, Columbia University

"David Shatz's Jewish Thought in Dialogue is rigorous and refreshing. Reflecting both his training in philosophy and intimate familiarity with Judaic materials, Shatz's essays will compel you to rethink matters of significant concern to religion and ethics. Highly recommended!"
—Gerald J. Blidstein, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University and recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Jewish Thought

"David Shatz's essays show us how, in the hands of a master, the analytic tools of Anglo-American philosophy can clarify and critically articulate the conceptual foundations of Judaism, and how halakhic and philosophical texts and discussions in the rabbinic tradition can enrich our understanidng of classical philosophical problems. These essays are constantly enlightening, closely argued and written with wit and insight. I learn from everything David Shatz writes."
—Josef Stern, William H. Colvin Professor of Philosophy and Director, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Chicago

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Saints' Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel's Urban Periphery.
by Yoram Bilu
ISBN 978-1-934843-71-0
364 pp. cloth
$57.00
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Publication Date: December, 2009

The astonishing revival of saint worship in contemporary Israel was ignited by Moroccan Jews, who had immigrated to the new country in the 1950s and 1960s.  The Saints' Impresarios charts the vicissitudes of four new domestic shrines, each established by Moroccan-born men and women in a peripheral development town, following an exciting revelation involving a saintly figure.  Each of the case studies discussing the life stories of the “saint impresarios” elaborates on a distinctive theme: dreams as psychocultural triggers for revelation; family and community responses to the initiative; female saint impresarios as healers; and the alleviation of life crises through the saint’s idiom. The initiatives are evaluated against the historical background of Jews in Morocco and the sociopolitical and cultural changes in present-day Israeli society. The original Hebrew edition garnered the coveted Bahat Prize (Haifa University Press) for best academic book in 2006. For readers interested in Israel and Jewish Studies, folk religion and mysticism, cultural and psychological anthropology, and Moroccan Jews. 

Reviews:

"These case studies of pilgrimage sites appearing on the margins of society touch on the quest for revitalization in the midst of individual and collective hardships, caused by migration and loneliness. The author portrays a unique class of religious virtuosi, the emissaries of forgotten holiness that haunts them in their dreams. Then, the dreamers become doers and manage to create a rebirth of lost traditions. We encounter here something that always lives at the heart of living religion, a mystery of seeming simplicity and innocence that manages to transform objective social barriers."
—Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Haifa University

"Yoram Bilu's work on the 'cult of saints' (tzaddiqim), a system of religious practice common among Israel's North African immigrants, represents a model of ethnographic research. His participant observations of pilgrimages - to the tombs of the saints, principally in the Negev and Galilee, the courts of their descendants and the sites of the newly venerated, together with his revealing interviews with custodians and devotees of these venues, offer a rich understanding of the cultural, social, and psychological forces that underpin this practice. Bilu examines the evolution and reinvigoration of this tradition through the proclamation of new heroes for worship and sites for veneration. His book is a necessary reading for anyone interested in the cultural and social dynamics that continue to shape Israeli society." 
—Moshe Shokeid, Tel-Aviv University     

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

The Multicultural Challenge in Israel.
edited by Ohad Nachtomy, Avi Sagi
ISBN 978-1-934843-49-9
360 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: November, 2009

Delving into Israel’s multifaceted society, editors Avi Sagi and Ohad Nachtomy, along with their distinguished contributors, explore the many ethnic and religious communities that comprise modern Israel and the ways in which they interact and often misunderstand each other. Detailing both the tensions between Israelis and Arab minorities, as well as issues involving recent immigrants and the different religious sects within the Jewish community at large, this collection of essays covers diverse subjects such as Holocaust education, language rights, military service, and the balancing of religious with secular systems of law. An essential read for anyone searching for a better understanding of the challenges being faced in contemporary Israel.

Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History

Encounters of Consequence: Jewish Philosophy in the Twentieth Century and Beyond.
by Michael Oppenheim
ISBN 978-1934843-67-3
432 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: October, 2009

Encounters of Consequence provides an introduction to and deeper analysis of the situation of Jewish philosophy beginning in the last century. It charts Jewish philosophy’s engagement with modernity and post-modernity along two overlapping axes—issues and persons—which often intersect. Key issues in modern Jewish philosophy are raised, including: the nature of Judaism and Jewish identity, the quests for meaning and continuity, the value of remaining a Jew, and the relevance of Jewish law, as well as the challenges of secularism, modern history (including the Holocaust), feminism and religious pluralism. Featured are many philosophers of encounter: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as Joseph Soloveitchik, Gershom Scholem, Arthur Cohen, Eliezer Schweid, Emil Fackenheim, and Irving Greenberg.

Reviews:

"This book of essays is in Michael Oppenheim’s distinctive voice—intelligent, insightful, and sensitive to all the important issues.  Always informed and thoughtful, Oppenheim brings out the best in his subjects.  In his criticism, he always seeks to illuminate rather than score points, and in dealing with some of the significant thinkers of our time he makes a valuable and important contribution to all who are interested in modern Jewish thought."
—Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Past President of the Jewish Life Network, Past Chairman of the United States Holocaust Council 

"Interweaving earlier articles into a new whole, Michael Oppenheim’s book advances and enhances each of his areas of focus: modern Jewish thought, philosophy, and feminism.  A study of fascinating originality, Oppenheim explores conceptions of self and the self’s relations to others from the vantage point of the formative twentieth-century Jewish philosophers.  Ultimately, it is Oppenheim’s measured sensibilities of comparison and rapprochement that make this volume valuable and unique."
—Barbara E. Galli, professor, author, and translator of major works of Franz Rosenzweig

"Michael Oppenheim’s Encounters of Consequence is a wonderful collection of essays showcasing the principal Jewish philosophers of the modern period.  He brings these thinkers into dialogue with others, highlighting some of the critical issues of our time.  In translating their insights for our mutual understanding, discussion, and critique, Oppenheim opens a parallel door to the transformative critique of feminist theory and philosophy."
—Norma Baumel Joseph, Professor of Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies, Department of Religion, Concordia University

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Three Jewish Journeys Through an Anthropologist’s Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to The Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah.
by Moshe Shokeid
ISBN 978-1-934843-36-9
400 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: September, 2009

Three Jewish Journeys Through an Anthropologist’s Lens provides an overview of the ethnographic works carried out by a leading Israeli anthropologist over the course of his career. It presents Moshe Shokeid’s explorations, discoveries, and feelings about the vicissitudes of social life, which he closely observed in three major arenas of contemporary Jewish life: Moroccan Jews who immigrated from the Atlas Mountains to become farmers in the semi-arid Negev fields; Israeli-born citizens who left their homes to start a new life in America; and, finally, American gay Jews who chose to preserve their cultural heritage and remain involved in synagogue life as part of the mosaic of New York Jews. The panoramic view of Shokeid’s ethnographic journeys ends with a discussion of his methods of research and his personal experiences as a participant observer among his fellow Jews in their unique paths to promote their social and spiritual aspirations.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

New Rituals - Old Societies: Invented Rituals in Contemporary Israel.
by Nissan Rubin
ISBN 978-1-934843-35-2
208 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: August, 2009

Rituals provide public solutions to some types of life crises. There are crises which beset individuals in modern and post-modern society which are not easily addressed by traditional rituals. However, rites have not disappeared in contemporary society, but have merely changed their guise. New Rituals - Old Societies examines rituals which were invented by individuals and communities in order to celebrate important turning points. In contemporary Israel a process of innovation of new rituals was introduced, either by the adoption of ritual elements from outside sources or by the transformation of existing Jewish symbols through the infusion of new contents originating in secular ideology. The term "personal definitional rites" coined here refers to rites carried out by individuals undergoing a change in identity.  Structural analysis supplies an additional dimension to this collection of studies.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Communal Gadfly - Jews, British Jews and the Jewish State: Asking the Subversive Questions.
by Geoffrey Alderman
ISBN 978-1-934843-46-8
290 pp. cloth
$35.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

Founded in 1841, the London-based Jewish Chronicle is the world’s oldest continuously circulating Jewish newspaper. Since 2002 its prestigious flagship “Comment” column has been written by Oxford-educated Dr. Geoffrey Alderman, the leading authority on the Jews of modern Britain, a prolific and controversial scholar whose views have attracted warm support and sweeping condemnation in equal measure. This anthology brings together over a hundred of his Jewish Chronicle op-eds on subjects as diverse as Jewish Orthodoxy, Ultra-Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Islamic Judeophobia, Islamophobia and Jewish approaches to politics and sex. “I have tried to be funny,” Alderman declares, “when occasion has seemed to me to warrant the deployment of a certain humour, which can be a valuable didactic tool and a powerful medium of communication. I have on occasion employed sarcasm and irony. But I have always tried to be scrupulously accurate as to facts, and to locate my comment within that groundwork. Above all, true to my vocation as a rebel who has refused to toe the communal line, I have always presented a point of view that is unashamedly mine.”

Reviews:

"In The Communal Gadfly, Alderman, professor at the University of Buckingham and author of Modern British Jewry, collects more than a hundred of his weekly columns from the venerable Jewish Chronicle since 2002, ranging widely in topic and tone. Though it represents only one man’s perspective, Alderman’s grab-bag of a book will be appreciated by historians half a century from now who want to establish what issues British Jews deemed worthy of discussion and debate in these years."
—Josh Lambert, Tablet

"factually fair, mostly cleverly balanced, and, at times, whimsical... What is most attractive is the tone of Alderman's natural voice. He has a rare ability to float above stylistic expectations, producing a fluid textual mix of the academic, the idiomatic, the conversational and the Yiddish."
—Barbara Jacobs, Times Higher Education

Series: Out of the Series

Variations on the Messianic Theme. A Case Study of Interfaith Dialogue.
by Marion Wyse
ISBN 978-1-934843-47-5
264 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

Over fifty years after the Holocaust, Marion Wyse explores interfaith dialogue between the Jewish and Christian communities and attempts to evaluate what goals these communities have reached and where they now stand. While many painful issues have been addressed and Jews and Christians in dialogue have achieved a solid respect for each other, the basic disagreement over the Christian designation of Jesus as the Jewish messiah still stands. Theologians have suggested varying approaches but none convince both parties.  This work employs William James’ radical empirical method to show that the original Jewish messianic concept, the Christian shift, and the Jewish repudiation of the shift, can each be seen as valid faith variants.

Review:

"Wyse’s explorations, beginning post-Shoah and retracing the steps backward into history to recover the idea of the messianic concept, hopefully to bring about future redemption and the reign of God, about which Jesus spoke and which Wyse holds out as the highest ideal for both religions, are extremely important."
—Libby Garshowitz, University of Toronto, Canada, published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the First Book of Psalms:.
translated by H. Norman Strickman
ISBN 978-1-934843-30-7
324 pp. cloth
$48.00
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Publication Date: June, 2009

Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, poet, philosopher, and mathematician, was one of the outstanding personalities produced by medieval Jewry. His chief claim to fame, however, is his commentary on the Bible. The latter is printed in all major editions of the Hebrew Scriptures and influenced other luminaries such as Maimonides, Rabbi David Kimchi, Nahmanides, Ralbag, Abravanel, and all serious students of the Hebrew Bible, for whom his works are essential. Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the first two Books of Psalms is now available in English for the first time, accompanied by a thorough annotation. Students of Scripture at all levels will find this a valuable tool for their studies of Scripture and Jewish thought.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Second Book of Psalms.
translated by H. Norman Strickman
ISBN 978-1-934843-31-4
216 pp. cloth
$48.00
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Publication Date: June, 2009

Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, poet, philosopher, and mathematician, was one of the outstanding personalities produced by medieval Jewry. His chief claim to fame, however, is his commentary on the Bible. The latter is printed in all major editions of the Hebrew Scriptures and influenced other luminaries such as Maimonides, Rabbi David Kimchi, Nahmanides, Ralbag, Abravanel, and all serious students of the Hebrew Bible, for whom his works are essential. Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the first two Books of Psalms is now available in English for the first time, accompanied by a thorough annotation. Students of Scripture at all levels will find this a valuable tool for their studies of Scripture and Jewish thought.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

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

Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides.
by Menachem Kellner
ISBN 978-1-934843-21-5
392 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: April, 2009

Science in the Bet Midrash explores the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), one of the most influential Jews of the last thousand years. While covering many aspects of his religious philosophy, these essays focus on the way Maimonides elucidated and expressed the universalistic thrust of the Jewish tradition. Maimonides construed the election of Israel as a challenge, not an endowment. This challenge is ultimately addressed to all human beings, not just to Jews.

Reviews:

"The essays in this book are bold, clear, and authoritative.  Anyone interested in Maimonides or the relation between science and religion will want to read them closely and then go back and read them again."
—Kenneth Seeskin, Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Religion, Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization, Northwestern University; Editor of the SUNY Press series in Jewish Philosophy.  

"Menachem Kellner’s Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Academic Studies Press) is a collection of previously published English essays, organized around 4 major themes:  Approaches to the Study of Maimonides; Religious Faith and Dogma; Science and Torah; and Universalism.  Fans of Kellner’s writings, including myself, will surely recognize that these themes (particularly dogma and universalism) were also the subject of some of his acclaimed (and sometimes controversial) books.  Those who have read those books may find some of the articles superfluous (sometimes they reflect earlier drafts, other times slight amendments or clarifications), but they remain probing and stimulating.  The articles are intended for the scholarly or sophisticated lay reader."
—Shlomo Brody, Tradition Online

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Marranos on the Moradas. Secret Jews and Penitentes in the Southwestern United States.
by Norman Simms
ISBN 978-1-934843-32-1
520 pp. cloth
$79.00
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Publication Date: January, 2009

Two groups were persecuted over the course of four hundred years in what is now the southwestern United States, each dissimulating and disguising who they truly were. Both now declare their true identities, yet raise hostility. The Penitentes are a lay Catholic brotherhood that practices bloody rites of self-flagellation and crucifixion, but claim this is a misrepresentation and that they are a community and a charitable organization. Marranos, an ambiguous and complicated population of Sephardic descendants, claim to be anousim. Both peoples have a complex, shared history. This book disentangles the web, redefines the terms, and creates new contexts in which these groups are viewed with respect and sympathy without idealizing or slandering them. Simms uses rabbinics, literary analyses, psychohistory, and cultural anthropology to consolidate a history of mentalities.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony Among Priests, Sages, and Laymen.
by Sigalit Ben-Zion
ISBN 978-1-934843-14-7
364 pp. cloth
$80.00
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Publication Date: December, 2008

A Roadmap to the Heavens challenges readers to rethink prevailing ideas about the social map of Jewish society during the Tannaitic period (70 C.E. – 220 C.E.). New insights were made possible by applying anthropological theories and conceptual tools. In addition, social phenomena were better understood by comparing them to similar social phenomena in other cultures regardless of time and space.

The book explores the rich and complex relationships between the Sages, Priests, and laymen who competed for hegemony in social, cultural, and political arenas. The struggle was not simply a case of attempting to displace the priestly elite by a new scholarly elite. Rather, in the process of constituting a counter-hegemony, the attitude of the Sages towards the Priests entailed ambivalent psychological mechanisms, such as attraction – rejection, imitation – denial, and cooperation – confrontation. The book further reveals that to achieve political and social power the Sages used the established hegemonic priestly discourse to undermine the existing social structure.

The innovative discovery of this monograph is that while the Sages professed a new social order based on intellectual achievement, they retained elements of the old order, such as family attribution, group nepotism, endogamy, ritual purity and impurity, and secret knowledge. Thus, social mobility based on education was available only to privileged social classes.
The conclusion of the book is that even though the Sages resisted the priestly hegemony and attempted to disengage from it, they could not free themselves from the shackles of the priestly discourse and praxis.

Reviews:

“A fascinating insight into the social structure and dynamics of the Tannaitic period . . . Dr. Ben-Zion creates an intriguing typology of the processes of identity formation, full of ambivalence, contradictions, and challenges. The book itself is well written, integrates theoretical and empirical material, and sheds light on a topic not hitherto examined from an anthropological point of view. In my opinion, it is an excellent example of the confluence of history and anthropology at the center of our discipline.”
—Eyal Ben-Ari, Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

"This is an important work at the intersection of anthropology, history, and the theory of religion...By applying various anthropological theories, Sigalit Ben-Zion opens up a dynamic landscape of identity formation among various groups, such as Priests and Sages. Dr. Ben-Zion’s ground-breaking work in the field of Jewish studies should engage a wide readership."
—Leif Manger, Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen
 
 

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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

Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain.
by Geoffrey Alderman
ISBN 978-1-934843-22-2
375 pp. cloth
$75.00
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Publication Date: July, 2008

Professor Geoffrey Alderman is the acknowledged authority on the history of the Jews in modern Britain. During an academic career spanning forty years he has produced some of the most authoritative and controversial studies in this field, lighting up the dark corners of the Jewish existence in Great Britain and revealing secrets the Anglo-Jewish communities would rather have kept from public view. In Controversy and Crisis, Alderman presents sixteen of these essays, covering fields as disparate as the history of the Jewish vote in the UK, the true story of the British Chief Rabbinate, and the uneasy tenure of Sir Jonathan Sacks in that office. He also considers the role of the historian in Anglo-Jewish life, and the troubled careers of some of its leaders and scholars.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Horizontal Society, Volumes 1, 2.
by Jose Faur
ISBN 978-1-934843-13-0; 978-193484318-5
456; 220 pp. cloth
$130.00
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Publication Date: June, 2008

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 theJewish 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: "Had 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 a rabbinic readership.

Reviews:

"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 Shasha, 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
2 volumes (vol.1 - 400 pp.,$90; vol.2 - 300 pp., $80)
Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

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 Boldness of an Halakhist: An Analysis of the Writings of Rabbi Yechiel Mechel Halevi Epstein - "The Arukh Hashulhan".
by Simcha Fishbane
ISBN 978-1-934843-03-1
208 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: March, 2008

The Boldness of a Halakhist analyzes the writings of Rabbi Yechiel Mechel Halevi Epstein (1829–1908), author of the Arukh Hashulkhan, a bold and unusual approach to Jewish law. Based primarily on the original text of Rabbi Epstein's legal codes and homilies, this work covers topics such as women, modernity, customs, and secular studies. It analyzes the rabbi's approach to Jewish law and Jewish life, designed to promote the spiritual welfare of Jews under the pressures of growing secularization and Russification. Although based upon the principles of the traditional judicial process, the rabbi’s rulings demonstrate a profound understanding of the contemporary social and historical reality facing the Jews of Russia at the turn of the century.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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