Shaping Losses explores how traumatic loss affects identity and how those who are shaped by loss give shape, in turn, to the empty place where something--relationships, family, culture--was and is no longer. Taking the example of the decimation of European Jewry during the Nazi era, Shaping Losses confronts the problem of transforming trauma into ......
Leading scholars in the field of Holocaust studies place the Nazi era in full historical perspective. This book is a broad overview of the Protestant and Catholic responses, including institutional churches, the theological faculties, and theologians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Joseph Lortz. Included are assessments of the German Christian ......
Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets
Weems' pioneering study explores the puzzling ways in which the Hebrew prophets' portrayals of divine love, compassion and covenantal commitment became associated with battery, infidelity, and the rape and mutilation of women.
Examines the meaning of Jewish politics in Israel In one of the first books to ask head-on what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, Yaacov Yadgar delves into what the designation "Jewish" amounts to in the context of the sovereign nation-state, and what it means for the politics of the state to be identified as Jewish. The volume ......
The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World
Explores the influence of Kabbalah in shaping America's religious identity In 1688, a leading Quaker thinker and activist in what is now New Jersey penned a letter to one of his closest disciples concerning Kabbalah, or what he called the mystical theology of the Jews. Around that same time, one of the leading Puritan ministers developed a ......
The Torah's Lens on Fifty-Four Fields of Human Knowledge
Moving from cosmology to creativity to criminology, the Torah explores the breadth of human existence: ethics and ritual, narratives of Patriarchs and Matriarchs, history and a philosophy of history--all of these drive the first five books of Hebrew Scripture. But as Rabbi Hillel Goldberg explains in this probing and insightful commentary, these ......
What we now call "Judaism" is the religion of the rabbis; it is rooted in scripture-the Hebrew Scriptures-but it is not to be identified with Old Testament theology. Judaism in its many manifestations has continued to evolve, rereading its ancient texts and extracting new meaning, while addressing contemporary issues such as the status of women ......
A surprising history of how the pig has influenced Jewish identity Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in biblical law. Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. Horses, rabbits, ......
Today there are more than seven million Jews in the United States. As with Americans of all ethnicities and religious persuasions, Jews can identify with and embrace their heritage in any number of ways. Alternatively, they can choose to distance themselves from anything distinctively Jewish. For millennia, the Torah - literally, instruction - ......
Israel's Lord addresses the nature of Jewish monotheism in the Second Temple period, especially in relation to a concept known as "two powers" in heaven. Wilhite and Winn review the various figures that were depicted as the second power in heaven, such as God's Word, God's Wisdom, the Angel of the Lord, the Son of Man, and others. By establishing ......
The Holiness of Doubt is a timely and essential contribution to the study of sacred Jewish texts. What does it mean for a book of faith for millions of people to be riddled with the uncertainties evoked by hundreds of questions? Rabbi Joshua Hoffman has chronicled the questions of the Torah and offers personal insights and the accumulated wisdom ......
Polygamy in the Law of Moses argues that the Mosaic Law provides implicit support for polygamy as a licit practice in the Old Testament period. This assertion is contrary to the claims of a number of contemporary influential scholars. This book examines six key texts: Exodus 21:7-11; Leviticus 18:18; Deuteronomy 17:17; 21:15-17; 22:23-29; and ......
In Orthodox Judaism, Halacha-the legal code derived from the Torah and the Talmud-constructs and determines Jewish life, informing not only practices of prayer and holiday observance but also financial behavior, personal relationships, and gender roles. Given the central importance of rabbinical Halachic guidance for everyday Jewish life, the ......
From Jews to Muslims: Twentieth-Century Converts to Islam tells the stories of twentieth century Jewish intellectuals and activists and their various and complex reasons for converting to the Islamic faith. Some were motivated by religious reasons, others by political considerations. The book focuses on the work of late nineteenth century European ......
Once referred to by the New York Times as the "Israeli Faulkner," A. B. Yehoshua's fiction invites an assessment of Israel's Jewish inheritance and the moral and political options that the country currently faces in the Middle East. The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua is an insightful overview of the fiction, nonfiction, and hundreds ......
This book focuses on the first Supreme Court case to grant Jewish Americans race-based civil rights and highlights the complexity of White-perceived Jewish racialization in the United States. In 1982, vandals defaced Shaare Tefila Congregation in Silver Spring, Maryland, with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi images and slogans. Because no religion-based ......
Representations of Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and the Holocaust in C
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Haunted Laughter addresses whether it is appropriate to use comedy as a literary form to depict Adolf Hitler, The Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Guided by existing theories of comedy and memory and through a comprehensive examination of comedic film and television productions, from the United ......
Francophone Sephardic Fiction: Writing Migration, Diaspora, and Modernity approaches modern Sephardic literature in a comparative way to draw out similarities and differences among selected francophone novelists from various countries, with a focus on North Africa. The definition of Sepharad here is broader than just Spain: it embraces Jews whose ......
Education and Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora
Jewish Paideia examines the diverse and complex views on education in the Hellenistic and early Roman Diaspora and how these understandings of education were inextricably bound to continually evolving constructions and reshapings of self- and communal identity.
Israeli Culture and Emergency Routine: Normalizing Stress explores the ways stress associated with a prolonged state of war, traumas, and emergency routine produces Israeli culture. Israeli Culture and Emergency Routine exposes the ways Israeli "emergency routine" leads to perpetual stress and trauma that are overwhelmingly present in the cultural ......
This volume charts the shifting boundaries of Judaism from antiquity to the modern period in order to bring clarity to what scholars mean when they claim that ancient texts or groups are "within Judaism," as well as exploring how rabbinic Jews, Christians, and Muslims have negotiated and renegotiated what Judaism is and is not in order to form ......
Long believed to bear witness to the beginning of all life, the Bible's first book, Genesis, has been plumbed by a cornucopia of theologies and philosophies for ideas about social organization, human relationships, class, gender and gender roles, marriage, land rights, private property, and so much more. For many readers, assumptions about a ......
Commentary Approaches to Cursing Psalms and their Relevance for Liturgy
Psalms that seem to vindicate vengeance and violence are generally omitted from liturgy, as exemplified in most breviaries used by worshipping communities around the world. Although seldom read, the so-called cursing psalms are known to many as their imprecatory passages pose challenges for readers who wish to use the entire Book of Psalms as ......
Enduring Jewish Communities around the World: Models of Effective Communication employs an organizational communication perspective to examine how strong internal and external communications have helped Jewish communities survive globally in unlikely locations, harsh circumstances, and periods of violent antisemitism. Drawing on in-depth ......
A Phenomenological Reading of Hosea 12.4-5 and 11.1-2: Commune with Us explores two passages from the Hebrew Bible's prophetic book containing puzzling plurals in the original language, pieces so enigmatic they are usually changed entirely in translation. Andrew Oberg, however, considers them delightfully confusing, and through in-depth ......
Scripture, Texts, and Tracings in Galatians and 1 Thessalonians advances the interpretation of these letters by exploring how the Apostle Paul quotes, alludes to or "echoes" the Jewish Scriptures and other ancient materials.
Resisting binary understandings of the human experience, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible calls to attention the fluidity and polyvalency in the Hebrew Bible. Alexiana Fry argues for a more holistic approach in studying texts embracing both the bodies of the past, and our own bodies.
Polyamory and Reading the Book of Ruth establishes a polyamorous hermeneutic for reading biblical texts and applies it to the Book of Ruth. The book concludes with a contemporary 'targumic' rendition of the Book of Ruth, which foregrounds this polyamorous reading.
The Reversal of the Curse against Adam and Israel in the Substructure of
In this book, David P. Barry examines the "divine son" motif in Romans 5 and 8 through the lens of exile and restoration, arguing that Paul deliberately employs both themes to show their fulfillment in Christ.
This book traces the history of Galilee from its biblical roots to the eruption of the Arab-Jewish conflict in 1948, illustrating how modernization in the region was intertwined with mystical beliefs and practices and developed among Palestinians, Orthodox Jews, Christians, an...
Jews and Muslims of Morocco collects accounts of the intersecting worlds and emergent shared customs and culture, suggesting that the unique atmosphere in Morocco allowed for Rabbinic empowerment and a more practical approach to halakhah.
Exploration of the Jewish Matrix of Early Christianity
This book explores the historical context of Paul and the way Paul's Jewish heritage was received, including the specifics of contemporary Jewish phenomena, within the successive generations of Jesus-followers during the first two centuries CE (in and outside the corpus of New Testament writings).
Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha
The Gospel reports about several men crucified under Pilate seem to have a reliable core. Taking seriously into account the collective nature of that execution, this book carries out a bold reconstruction of Jesus of Nazareth's story in the framework of Jewish anti-Roman resistance, thereby making sense of that crucifixion.
Several world cities are held in reverence by some or all three monotheistic faiths, but no world region has allure to all three on a level matched by Galilee in northern Israel. The region where Jesus came of age, Galilee is where Christianity came into being as a communal faith; it is where Judaism reinvented itself in rabbinic, Talmudic form ......
Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land
An intimate account of Orthodox family planning amid shifting state policies in Israel In recent years, Israeli state policies have attempted to dissuade Orthodox Jews from creating large families, an objective that flies in the face of traditional practices in their community. As state desires to cultivate a high-income, tech-centered nation ......
