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This book analyzes the history of the interpretation of the book of Job by medieval Jewish exegetes. The scholarship on medieval Jewish thought has focused largely on the systematic philosophical aspects of this literature. The author, however, is concerned with exegesis qua exegesis. He offers a close examination of commentaries on Job written by six major thinkers: Saadiah Gaon (882-942, Egypt and Babylon), Moses Maimonides (1138-1204, Spain and Egypt), Samuel ibn Tibbon (1160-1230, Provence), Zerahiah Hen (13th Century, Barcelona and Rome), Levi Gersonides (1288-1344, Provence), and Simeon ben Zeham Duran (1361-1444, Majorca and Algiers). Saadiah and Maimonides wrote in Arabic, the other four in Hebrew. The author looks at the relationship between the commentaries and their antecedent sources as well as their relationship to the broader context of medieval Jewish thought. He also provides an overview of the questions the commentators confronted about the historicity, national origin, and “Jewishness” of the text. He argues that the commentaries on Job are linked in a coherent and evolving tradition of interpretation and he identifies various views of providence as the central concern of them all.

This book seeks to reconstruct the earliest rabbinic discourse of minut (frequently understood as the Hebrew equivalent of the Christian term “heresy”), and to reassess the place that early Christianity occupied in that discourse. It suggests that the emergence of the rabbinic discourse of religious identity was a response to an identity crisis of a post-traumatic society, shattered by the powerful Roman empire. In order to re-affirm its values and distinct Jewish identity Palestinian rabbinic society developed a discourse of “heresy,” in which its religious boundaries were re-established by the labeling of some Jews as minim, and their placement beyond the pale. That discourse emphasized notions of social and communal solidarity and belonging, much more than a strictly defined concept of “correct belief,” and minim, accordingly, were Jews who's fault was seen in their separation from the rest of the Jewish community. The place that Christianity occupied in that discourse was relatively small, and the early Christians, who only gradually were introduced into the category of minim and became to be considered as such, were not its main target. Throughout Late Antiquity, the “significant other” for Palestinian Rabbis remained the Roman Empire, and the religious challenge with which they were mostly occupied was the Empire's power and the challenge it posed to the belief in God's power and His divinity.

At the time of the Nazi invasion in May 1940, Belgium was a Catholic country with linguistic divisions between north and south. The Catholic Church was the only institution untouched by the German occupiers. Therefore many hunted Jews sought the Church's help, which was spontaneously extended by the lower clergy. The book is based on unstructured interviews with formerly hidden children, with nuns who sheltered them, and with two surviving escorts who worked for the Committee for the Defense of Jews resistance network and took the children from their families to convents willing to hide them. The interviews detail from the point of view of both nuns and children how the children were integrated into daily convent life and how they reacted to Catholic rituals and socialization. The lives are framed by their historical context. The chapter on the escorts and on the Committee for the Defense of Jews leads to a general discussion of the different facets of the Belgian resistance. A chapter on memory and commemoration then traces the emergence of the concept of the hidden child and the construction of collective memories. The chapter also addresses the formal recognition of rescuers as “Righteous Among the Nations” and offers an in‐depth interpretation of Yad Vashem, the memorial institution of Israel. At the same time, it uncovers how gender initially played a major role in the recognition of priests and nuns who were rescuers. The struggle for the souls of some orphaned Jewish children who were baptized during the war and whose return to the Jewish community was contested is discussed as a particularly painful episode. This book contributes to Holocaust literature written in English about Belgium, a country given relatively too little attention. With its focus on commemoration, the book also adds to the understanding of how memory is institutionalized and reinforced by mnemonic practices.

From major seminal works such as the Mishnah or the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, to Biblical commentaries, translations of Biblical books into Aramaic or relatively little-known mystical, liturgical, or apocalyptic writings, this book is a complete guide to the rich tradition of Jewish literature in the second to seventh centuries of the Common Era. Each work is described in a way that covers its contents, dating, language, and accessibility (or otherwise) in print or online. The aim throughout is to cover all of this literature and to answer the following questions: What Jewish literature, written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, has survived? What different genres of such literature are there? What printed texts or translations into any modern language, or commentaries (either in Hebrew or a European language) are there? And, for those who want to enquire further, what are the manuscripts on which modern editions are based?

Recent sociological studies have confirmed the persistence of profound internal challenges to the continuity of Judaism as a religion and to the Jews as a people. These challenges are eroding the foundations of Jewish identity and are threatening the authenticity of Judaism as a historical living faith-tradition. This work “makes the case” for a return to Jewish theology as a means of restoring Jewish authenticity and for reversing self-destructive trends. After identifying and critiquing various “substitute faiths” embraced by many contemporary Jews in Chapters One and Two, the nature and goals of Jewish theology are examined (Chapter Three). Rather than depicting theology as “faith seeking understanding,” the chapters that follow present a comprehensive theology of Judaism, deeply rooted in classical Jewish texts, and an understanding of theology as “faith seeking meaning (Chapter Four). Rather than portraying theology, as often has been the case, as a systematic creed imposed from without, theology is presented here as an outcome of the dialogue between an individual's quest for meaning and the spiritual and intellectual resources of a historical faith-tradition—in this case, Judaism. Features of faith such as living in a covenantal relationship (Chapter Five), seeking a rendezvous with God in the self, the sacred word, the world, and the sacred and ethical deed, are offered as paths to individual meaning and to creating one's life as a work of art (Chapter Six), despite the challenges of evil and absurdity encountered in daily experience (Chapters Seven and Eight).

Judaism is a religion that historically has emphasized the importance of a set of practical commandments, and in the history of Jewish philosophy various attempts have been made to rationalize or justify these commandments. In this book, Daniel Rynhold attempts to formulate a general model for the justification of practices out of a critical analysis of approaches taken to the issue of ta’amei ha-mitzvot (the rationalization of the commandments) within Jewish philosophy.

Bringing a modern analytical framework to bear on the methods of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides and the contemporary thinker Joseph Soloveitchik, Rynhold argues that despite being put forward as opposing approaches, their views on ta’amei ha-mitzvot share a central methodological presumption—the Priority of Theory (PoT). Rynhold’s critique of this method, based primarily on developing an argument from uncodifiability is followed by the development of his own original method of justifying practices that he terms the Priority of Practice (PoP). Rynhold’s innovative approach, based on an analysis of the concept of faith as presented in certain central strands of the Jewish tradition emphasizes the limits of propositional methods for justifying practices in general and the need for a more pragmatic line in which practices are justified practically rather than by reference to theories and principles. Whilst much work in Jewish philosophy is more historical than conceptual, Rynhold’s attempt to bring together Jewish and general philosophy yields a work that illustrates how Jewish philosophy can be of more than historical interest and make a genuine contribution to current philosophical debate.

Traces the development of the Jewish calendar—how months and years were reckoned—from its earliest descriptions in the second century b.c.e. until it reached, in the tenth century c.e., to its present form. Solar and lunar calendars are attested in the early period, but by the first century c.e., the Jewish calendar had become predominantly lunar. A wide range of sources (literary, documentary/epigraphic, Jewish, Graeco‐Roman, and Christian) reveals, however, that Jewish communities in Palestine and the diaspora reckoned their lunar calendar independently from one another, and hence, would often celebrate the same festivals at different times. This diversity persisted until the end of antiquity, although some general trends can be identified. Until the first century c.e., Jewish lunar calendars tended to be late in relation to the solar year, and Passover would always occur after the spring equinox; whereas, by the fourth century, intercalations were adjusted in such a way that Passover was frequently earlier. In the fourth century, moreover, many communities began to calculate the day of the new moon instead of relying on observation of the new crescent, as had previously been the norm. The change from observation to calculation is particularly evident in the case of the rabbinic calendar, for which there is more evidence than any other Jewish calendar. Largely under pressure from the Babylonian rabbinic community, the rabbinic calendar gradually evolved from the third century c.e. into a fixed, calculated calendar, which became dominant in the Jewish world by the tenth century. The general evolution of the Jewish calendar throughout our period, from considerable diversity (solar and lunar calendars) to unity (a single, normative rabbinic calendar), can be explained as epitomizing the emerging solidarity and communitas of the Jewish communities of late antiquity and the early medieval world.

This new edition has been considerably expanded to take in work on the legal and didactic material published since the 1980s. It gives more attention to the different literary genres used by Israel's sages, and to the social settings in which the material came into existence and circulated. References to relevant archaeological data have also been brought up to date. The main purpose of the book, however, remains the same – to trace the course of two related key streams of tradition, law, and wisdom throughout the history of Israel in the biblical period, and to demonstrate their essential lines of continuity with classical Jewish thought and early Christian theology.

In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492, the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? This book presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. The book offers a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.

This book offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. This book argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis‘ self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, the book analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. It also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as this book argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. This book examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. The book argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.