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

 In The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler, 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, 1942-1944. 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 care-taker for the hidden Jews on his family’s farm. Edmund’s daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written the 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. 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 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.

"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 Saint's Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel's Urban Periphery.
by Yoram Bilu
ISBN 978-1-934843-71-0
416 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 Saint's Impresarios charts the vicissitudes of four new domestic shrines, established by Moroccan-born men and women in peripheral development towns, 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. For readers interested in Israel and Jewish Studies, folk religion and mysticism, cultural and psychological anthropology, and Moroccan Jews. 

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Multicultural Challenge in Israel.
edited by Ohad Nachtomy, Avi Sagi
ISBN 978-1-934843-49-9
270 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.8

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
424 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: October, 2009

Encounters of Consequence provides an introduction and deeper analysis of the situation of Jewish philosophy in the last century and beyond. 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, the relevance of Jewish law, as well as the challenges of secularism, modern history (including the Holocaust), feminism and religious pluralism. Featured are those 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.

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
392 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: September, 2009

The book presents a list of chapters that introduce a life-long career of ethnographic works carried out by a leading Israeli anthropologist. 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 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 maintain spiritual synagogue life as part of the mosaic of New York Jews. The panorama of Shokeid’s ethnographic journeys ends with a few chapters that display his methods of research and his personal experiences as participant observer among his fellow Jews in their unique path 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
240 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. Focusing on the secular society of contemporary Israel, this
collection examines rituals which were invented by communities and individuals 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 was introduced as a tool to interpret rites carried out by individuals undergoing a change in identity.

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
300 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
262 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 Jewish-Christian dialogue have achieved a solid respect for each other, the but basic disagreement over the Christian designation of Jesus as the Jewish messiah still stands. Theologians have suggested varying approaches but none convince both partners, so 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.

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

This work offers a new translation of Matthew, graciously offered by Peter Zaas (with some minor revisions by David Malone and Herbert Basser). Basser gives us a verse-by-verse commentary to the first half of the Gospel in 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 evangelist’s sources. These Jewish materials provide a creative, cultural way of thinking about what God expects from human beings that is infused with the words and images of Matthew. Basser shows 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 a scholarly yet accessible 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, Professor of New Testament Studies at 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

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, 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, Abarvanel, 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 are now available in English for the first time, accompanied by a thorough annotation. Students of Scripture at all levels will find this a valuable asset to their studies of Scripture and Jewish thought.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

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, 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 asset to their studies of Scripture and Jewish thought.

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: June, 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.

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

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

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

Avi Sagi's book 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

This book 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, the central focus of these essays is 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.

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 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 practiced bloody rites of self-flagellation and crucifixion, but claim this is a misrepresentation and that they are a community and 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. It 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
200 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, love of one’s fellow, draw their meaning.

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: December, 2008

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.

Reviews:
"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

The challenge of this book has been 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.”

Reviewed by 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.”

Reviewed by Leif Manger, Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

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 it, 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 ofAustro-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 withYehielYeshaiaTrunk's masterful evocation of Jewish life in Poland, Poyln.5

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

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Jewish Peoplehood: Change and Challenge.
edited by Ezra Kopelowitz, Menachem Revivi
ISBN 978-1-934843-24-6
200 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: August, 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, rather, a dynamic think tank on the concept of Jewish peoplehood through 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

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 human and not only a 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.
This is a large, complex story in which the author describes the contributions of Mendelssohn, Wessely, Krochmal, Zunz, the mainstream Zionist thinkers (especially Ahad Ha-Am, Bialik, and A.D. Gordon), Kook, Kaplan, and Dubnow to the formulation of the various versions of the modern Jewish cultural ideal.

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

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 Jewish community in the United States 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.

Reviews:
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

Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain.
by Geoffrey Alderman
ISBN 978-1-934843-22-2
350 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 this book he 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, vol. 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.



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
220 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

Focusing on the concept of time and the life cycle, this collection of articles examines Jewish life in theTalmudic period through the lens of Jewish law and custom of the time.The essays are the work of Nissan Rubin (one 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
240 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

Classical Judaism imagined the people Israel’s situation in three aspects to be unique among the nations of the earth. The nations lived in unclean lands contaminated by corpses and redolent of death. They themselves are 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 lives in sacred space and in enchanted time, all the while subject to the constant surveillance of an eye that sees
all and 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 to transcend the movement of history and to live 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.

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
220 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 comandments. 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

This book 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
216 pp. cloth
$70.00
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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 that 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 whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-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
224 pp. cloth
$70.00
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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” (from the Liberty Bell), and: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity” (motto of the Jewish National Fund).
More broadly, 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 whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-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