Religion

Among scholars of Jewish Studies, the process, history, and literature of exiting one’s native religious community is increasingly recognized as a new area within the field which, ironically, has a history stretching back to antiquity. By presenting scholarship from a diverse range of disciplines—including history, sociology, psychology, and gender studies—this volume deepens and broadens readers’ understanding of the complexity of the topic of taking leave of the Orthodox community in which one has been raised and establishing a different kind of life that is outside of its borders.

This book explores how modern religious thought and religious Zionism have addressed the profound question of evil, with a particular focus on the Holocaust. It delves into the theological and philosophical challenges posed by absolute, undeniable, and inexplicable primal evil. The awareness of this primal evil serves as the foundation connecting the chapters, which trace the perspectives of influential thinkers such as Rabbis Zvi Yehuda Kook, Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, and Eliezer Berkowitz, as well as figures like Rabbi David Hartman and Eliezer Goldman.

Through a combination of philosophical and theological inquiry alongside historical and conceptual analysis, the book creates a rich mosaic of religious thought in the modern era. It also examines the responses of leaders and activists to the enduring question of evil in the shadow of Auschwitz.

Modern Orthodoxy is a form of American Judaism that affirms the traditional tenets and practices of Orthodox Judaism while at the same time maintaining an openness to contemporary cultural and intellectual developments. Beginning in the post-World War II era, Living in Both Worlds shows how a fledgling Modern Orthodoxy carved out an identity separate and apart from unacculturated ultra-Orthodoxy to its right and Conservative Judaism to its left, and follows its development through the first quarter of the twenty-first century as new, divisive issues such as feminism, LGBTQ rights, and the spread of academic biblical scholarship challenged its coherence, and a rejuvenated ultra-Orthodoxy contested its religious legitimacy.

This groundbreaking volume bridges ancient wisdom and contemporary Jewish spirituality, offering fresh insights into Hasidic homilies as dynamic sources of meaning and renewal. Featuring nineteen scholars and educators, the book delves into the mystical depth and poetic imagination of these texts, revealing their power to inspire ethical and spiritual growth. Through close readings and practical reflections, the contributors explore innovative pedagogies for hermeneutical and existential transformation. With a programmatic introduction by Elie Holzer, this collection offers a rare look at the lived experience of teaching Hasidic homilies, addressing classroom dilemmas and spiritual impact. Essential for seekers and educators, it opens new pathways to renewed Jewish spirituality and divine-centered living.

Zionism and Jewish Culture examines the history of Zionism from a new perspective, arguing that Zionism was not only a political project, but also a major cultural force in modern Jewish life. To understand the growth of this movement and its success in establishing a modern Jewish state, the book examines the cultural world of pre-state Zionist activists, offering an understanding of the basic ideological challenges they faced—challenges that Israel is still grappling with today. It asks, how did the early Zionists define the relationship between Israel and Jewish tradition? How did they envision the ideal balance between the Jewish people’s welfare and the Land of Israel? What was their view on Western versus Eastern principles in defining the state? And what was their vision for the future of the Jewish state? In exploring these topics, this book enables a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to shape Zionism and Israel today.

From Tiberias With Love is a journey to rediscovering the magic and mystery, the intimacy and depth of a lost moment in the history of a remarkably relevant conscious community in the Galilee that still has much to teach us. In the year 1777, a group of spiritual seekers from Eastern European set sail in search of a promised land, far away from the internal and external conflicts plaguing those souls seeking the infinite within this finite world. Some who set sail identified with the burgeoning Jewish spiritual renewal movement of Hasidism, while others seem to have just come along for the ride. Weathering challenges both socioeconomic and geographic, this emigrating group sought to establish a center for a burgeoning hasidic ethos that would radiate to the Diaspora from its renewed center in the Holy Land in Palestine. Tiberian Hasidism provides a model of an intensive contemplative life that is particularly appealing to contemporary spiritual seekers for many reasons, including: its deep focus on mystical theology; devotional practice; and the ecstasy of deep friendship rather than allegiance to an institutionalized religion. This volume focuses on the teachings of letters of love from Vitebsker and Kalisker in Tiberias to their disciples in Eastern Europe known as the Iggrot Qodesh, still so ripe for excavation, offering an authentic roadmap to future contemplative pathways ripe for our age.

This book thoroughly examines Genizah fragments of Tractate Eruvin in the Babylonian Talmud from Cambridge University Library's Taylor Schechter collection. While previous research has focused on cataloging and categorizing the fragments and providing short, generalized descriptions, this study systematically explores whether the versions in the Genizah fragments contain significant differences compared to the print and manuscript versions of Tractate Eruvin. It also aims to note these differences and to investigate to what degree they affect or change our understanding of sugyot from Tractate Eruvin in light of the comparison between the Genizah version and the print version. 

This three-volume book investigates the Russian transformations of one of the central concepts of Greek Christology, the self-humiliation or kenosis of Christ. The author applies rhetoric (paradox, metaphor, metonymy) as a means to elucidate mechanisms of theological persuasion and to trace the representations of the humiliated Christ and his imitations in various media from liturgy and iconology to everyday practice and literary fiction. The exploration of post-Christian literature of the 19th and 20th century (N. Chernyshevskii, M. Gor’kii, N. Ostrovskii, Ven. Erofeev, Vl. Sorokin) demonstrates the existence of a kenotic Christology after Christianity.

RU

This three-volume book investigates the Russian transformations of one of the central concepts of Greek Christology, the self-humiliation or kenosis of Christ. The author applies rhetoric (paradox, metaphor, metonymy) as a means to elucidate mechanisms of theological persuasion and to trace the representations of the humiliated Christ and his imitations in various media from liturgy and iconology to everyday practice and literary fiction. The exploration of post-Christian literature of the 19th and 20th century (N. Chernyshevskii, M. Gor’kii, N. Ostrovskii, Ven. Erofeev, Vl. Sorokin) demonstrates the existence of a kenotic Christology after Christianity.

Israel and the Nations: The Bible, The Rabbis, and Jewish-Gentile Relations explores the Jewish theology and law (Halakhah) relating to non-Jews. It analyzes biblical, talmudic, medieval, and contemporary Jewish writings about gentiles and their religions.

The Bible challenges the Jewish people to be “a blessing for all the families of the earth.” Yet throughout history, Jewish experience with gentiles was complex. In the biblical and talmudic eras most gentiles were assumed to be idolators. In the Middle Ages most rabbis considered their Christian neighbors idolators, and Christian enmity sharpened the otherness Jews felt toward their Christian hosts. Muslims were monotheists, but Jewish-Muslim relations were sometimes positive and at other times difficult. With the advent secular tolerance in modernity, Jews found themselves in a new relationship with their gentile neighbors. How should Jews relate to gentiles today, and what are the bounds of Jewish tolerance and religious pluralism?

The book will interest both Jewish laypersons familiar with Jewish tradition as well as scholars of theology and interfaith relations

Israel and the Nations: The Bible, The Rabbis, and Jewish-Gentile Relations explores the Jewish theology and law (Halakhah) relating to non-Jews. It analyzes biblical, talmudic, medieval, and contemporary Jewish writings about gentiles and their religions.

The Bible challenges the Jewish people to be “a blessing for all the families of the earth.” Yet throughout history, Jewish experience with gentiles was complex. In the biblical and talmudic eras most gentiles were assumed to be idolators. In the Middle Ages most rabbis considered their Christian neighbors idolators, and Christian enmity sharpened the otherness Jews felt toward their Christian hosts. Muslims were monotheists, but Jewish-Muslim relations were sometimes positive and at other times difficult. With the advent secular tolerance in modernity, Jews found themselves in a new relationship with their gentile neighbors. How should Jews relate to gentiles today, and what are the bounds of Jewish tolerance and religious pluralism?

The book will interest both Jewish laypersons familiar with Jewish tradition as well as scholars of theology and interfaith relations

There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so?

This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.

This study vividly illustrates the “Jewish-Arab symbiosis,” highlighting the shared spiritual language and rich, intertwined worlds of Islamic and Jewish philosophy, theology, and mysticism.

This revised and supplemented second edition features some of the author's most probing essays and speeches on antisemitism, published here for the first time.

A 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist in the Religion Category

“With clarity and penetrating insight, Alex Ryvchin unravels the mystery of antisemitism… Mandatory reading for anyone concerned with the ethical fate of the human race.” 

― Isaac Herzog, President of the State of Israel

The 7 Deadly Myths traces antisemitism from its earliest origins to the present day and uncovers the dangerous conspiracy theories that have corrupted reasoning and led people and nations to diabolical acts. Exploring some of the most significant events in history and uncovering little-known villains, this book answers the questions of how antisemitism takes hold, how it is transmitted and how it inspires violence to the present day. Written in a clear and compelling style, this book is essential to understanding why this ancient hatred continues to plague society, inspiring pop stars, athletes and demagogues alike. It is a crucial resource for policy makers, students and the reading public seeking to understand racism and how it can be stopped.

Completed shortly before Hamas carried out its barbaric October massacre, Hate Speech and Academic Freedom takes up issues that have consequently gained new urgency in the academy worldwide. It is the first book to ask what impact antisemitism has had on the fundamental principles the academy relies on for its identity—academic freedom, free speech rights, standards for hiring or firing faculty members and administrators, and the ethics of academic conduct and debate. Antisemitic hatred is spreading at a fever pitch. What steps can counter it? What damage to students is done when departments embrace anti-Zionism? Should faculty members face consequences for promoting antisemitism on social media? Should universities make a new push to adopt the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism?

This book discusses psychological aspects of dehumanization and of the human tendency to dominate, control and potentially murder those considered less than or “other” by the dominant group. It explores how increasingly severe dehumanization resulted in the genocide of six million Jews in the second World War. Psychological and behavioral strategies Nazi aggressors and ordinary citizens used to mislead themselves during this process are described. Understanding the sequence of events from dehumanization to murder has implications for the apparent tendency of human beings to harm and potentially kill those who appear “different”, or who are made into the “other”. Efforts to prevent genocide should actively challenge dehumanization of weaker populations whenever possible, even when dehumanization appears mild, “insignificant,” or “innocuous.”

In twenty-first century America, antisemitism is on the rise, especially on the extreme left, the radical right, and within political Islamism. Expressions of this oldest hatred are also increasingly prevalent in popular culture, where they are spread by politicians, entertainers and celebrities, the media, social justice activists, and religious leaders, as well as in universities, in schools, on the streets, and even, in some instances, by Jews. Once, Jews regarded the United States as die Goldene Medina–the Golden Land–where they could escape persecution and finally be free. However, this dream has not been realized and major trends are moving in the opposite direction. In Poisoning the Wells, leading scholars analyze contemporary antisemitism in the United States.

Hebrew University Professor Emeritus and Israel Prize recipient Eliezer Schweid (1929-2022) is widely regarded as one of the greatest historians of Jewish thought of our era. In Siddur Hatefillah, he probes the Jewish prayer book as a reflection of Judaism's unity and continuity as a unique spiritual entity; and as the most popular, most uttered, and internalized text of the Jewish people. Schweid explores texts which process religious philosophical teaching into the language of prayer, and/or express philosophical ideas in prayer’s special language – which the worshipper reflects upon in order to direct prayer, and through which flows hoped-for feedback. With the addition of historical, philological, and literary contexts, the study provides the reader with first-time access to the comprehensive meaning of Jewish prayer—filling a vacuum in both the experience and scholarship of Jewish worship.

Patriots without a Homeland dissects an important underexplored theme in Hungarian Jewry: Modern Orthodoxy. 

This study clearly demonstrates that beginning from the late nineteenth century, a strong modernizing trend developed within Orthodoxy based on the adoption of Hungarian national identity alongside the preservation of tradition. Modern Orthodoxy was receptive to the Hungarian language, culture, and religion. However, the attempt to integrate failed.

The book traces the journey of Hungarian Jews from Emancipation to the Holocaust and seeks to understand the reasons for the Jews’ complete trust in Hungarian integrity. For instance, why did they believe until the very last moment that the Holocaust would not affect them? How could they fail to notice the impending disaster?

This is the story of a community that felt rooted in the land and contributed greatly to its well-being, but was eventually rejected: the story of patriots without a homeland.

One of the most basic questions for any legal system is that of methodology: how one interprets, analyzes, weighs, and applies a mass of often competing legal rules, precedents, practices, customs, and traditions to reach final determinations and practical guidance about the correct legal-prescribed course of action in any given situation. Questions of legal methodology raise not only practical concerns, but theoretical and philosophical ones as well. We expect law to be more than the arbitrary result of a given decision maker’s personal preferences, and so we demand that legal methodologies be principled as well as practical. These issues are especially acute in religious legal systems, where the stakes are raised by concerns for respecting not just human, but divine law. Despite this, the major scholars and codifiers of halakhah, or Jewish law, have only rarely explicated their own methods for reaching principled legal decisions. This book explains the major jurisprudential factors driving the halakhic jurisprudence of Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein, twentieth-century author of the Arukh Hashulchan—the most comprehensive, seminal, and original modern restatement of Jewish law since Maimonides. Reasoning inductively from a broad review of hundreds of rulings from the Orach Chaim section of the Arukh Hashulchan, the book teases out and explicates ten core halakhic principles that animate Rabbi Epstein’s halakhic decision-making. Along the way, it compares the Arukh Hashulchan methodology to that of the Mishna Berura. This book will help any reader understand important methodological issues in both Jewish and general jurisprudence.

Hebrew University Professor Emeritus and Israel Prize recipient Eliezer Schweid (1929-2022) is widely regarded as one of the greatest historians of Jewish thought of our era. In Siddur Hatefillah, he probes the Jewish prayer book as a reflection of Judaism's unity and continuity as a unique spiritual entity; and as the most popular, most uttered, and internalized text of the Jewish people. Schweid explores texts which process religious philosophical teaching into the language of prayer, and/or express philosophical ideas in prayer’s special language – which the worshipper reflects upon in order to direct prayer, and through which flows hoped-for feedback. With the addition of historical, philological, and literary contexts, the study provides the reader with first-time access to the comprehensive meaning of Jewish prayer—filling a vacuum in both the experience and scholarship of Jewish worship.

A Winner of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa 2023 Bernard Lewis Prize

Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements, takes us through the first years of the third millennium (2000-2003), documenting how a radical inability of Westerners to understand the medieval mentality that drove Global Jihad prompted a series of disastrous misinterpretations and misguided reactions that have shaped our so-far unhappy century. These misinterpretations in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, contributed fundamentally to the ever-worsening moral and empirical disorientations of our information elites (journalists, academics, pundits). So while journalists reported Palestinian war propaganda as news (lethal journalism), they were also reporting Jihadi war propaganda as news (own-goal war journalism). These radical disorientations have created our current dilemma of pervasive information distrust, deep splits within the voting public in most democracies, the politicization of science, and the inability of Western elites to defend their civilization, and instead, to stand down before an invasion.

Since the turn of the millennium, rapid advances in technology, globalized markets, and atomized politics instigated in the American and Israeli Jewish communities questions about the morals of food consumption. 

Contemporary issues such as workers’ rights, animal welfare, environmental protection, among others, intersect with basic Jewish food ethics: while Jewish communities respect ancient laws, they also appreciate the importance of progress and look forward to a more repaired world. In these pages, readers will have the unique opportunity to delve into the minds of the brightest Modern Orthodox thinkers of the current generation. The contributions contained in Kashrut & Jewish Food Ethics by members of the progressive Orthodox Jewish association Torat Chayim are rich in detail and offer new paradigms for the practical observance of kashrut that have swirled in the ether for generations.

Since the turn of the millennium, rapid advances in technology, globalized markets, and atomized politics instigated in the American and Israeli Jewish communities questions about the morals of food consumption. 

Contemporary issues such as workers’ rights, animal welfare, environmental protection, among others, intersect with basic Jewish food ethics: while Jewish communities respect ancient laws, they also appreciate the importance of progress and look forward to a more repaired world. In these pages, readers will have the unique opportunity to delve into the minds of the brightest Modern Orthodox thinkers of the current generation. The contributions contained in Kashrut & Jewish Food Ethics by members of the progressive Orthodox Jewish association Torat Chayim are rich in detail and offer new paradigms for the practical observance of kashrut that have swirled in the ether for generations.

There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so?

This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.

Hebrew University Professor Emeritus and Israel Prize recipient Eliezer Schweid (1929-2022) is widely regarded as one of the greatest historians of Jewish thought of our era. In Siddur Hatefillah, he probes the Jewish prayer book as a reflection of Judaism's unity and continuity as a unique spiritual entity; and as the most popular, most uttered, and internalized text of the Jewish people. Schweid explores texts which process religious philosophical teaching into the language of prayer, and/or express philosophical ideas in prayer’s special language – which the worshipper reflects upon in order to direct prayer, and through which flows hoped-for feedback. With the addition of historical, philological, and literary contexts, the study provides the reader with first-time access to the comprehensive meaning of Jewish prayer—filling a vacuum in both the experience and scholarship of Jewish worship.

Over a career spanning forty years, David G. Dalin has written extensively about the role of American Jews in public life, from the nation’s founding, to presidential appointments of Jews, to lobbying for the welfare of Jews abroad, to Jewish prominence in government, philanthropy, intellectual life, and sports, and their one-time prominence in the Republican Party. His work on the separation of Church and State and a prescient 1980 essay about the limits of free speech and the goal of Neo-Nazis to stage a march in Skokie, Illinois, are especially noteworthy. Here for the first time are a collection of sixteen of his essays which portray American Jews who have left their mark on American public life and politics.

Patriots without a Homeland dissects an important underexplored theme in Hungarian Jewry: Modern Orthodoxy. 

This study clearly demonstrates that beginning from the late nineteenth century, a strong modernizing trend developed within Orthodoxy based on the adoption of Hungarian national identity alongside the preservation of tradition. Modern Orthodoxy was receptive to the Hungarian language, culture, and religion. However, the attempt to integrate failed.

The book traces the journey of Hungarian Jews from Emancipation to the Holocaust and seeks to understand the reasons for the Jews’ complete trust in Hungarian integrity. For instance, why did they believe until the very last moment that the Holocaust would not affect them? How could they fail to notice the impending disaster?

This is the story of a community that felt rooted in the land and contributed greatly to its well-being, but was eventually rejected: the story of patriots without a homeland.

“‘Jewish identity’ is such a complex idea—neither simply a religious, nor cultural, nor ethnic ‘identity,’ but all of those things combined (and more). This important volume rejects narrow definitions and resists the way that ‘identity’ has been oversimplified and flattened in Jewish communal contexts. Along the way, it offers new paths for other communities struggling with concepts of identity to follow as well.” — Felicia Herman, Executive Director, Natan Fund

There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so?

This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.

“The Jewish Metropolis gives readers a fascinating whirlwind tour of Jewish New York from the 1620s to the 2020s. Every essay is enlightening, erudite, and thoroughly enjoyable.” —Tyler Anbinder, author of City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York

The Jewish Metropolis: New York City from the 17th to the 21st Century covers the entire sweep of the history of the largest Jewish community of all time. It provides an introduction to many facets of that history, including: 

• The ways in which waves of immigration shaped New York’s Jewish community
• Jewish cultural production in English, Yiddish, Ladino, and German
• New York’s contribution to the development of American Judaism
• Jewish interaction with other ethnic and religious groups
• And Jewish participation in the politics and culture of the city as a whole

When Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Code of Jewish Law) reached Lunel, France, a group of scholars composed twenty-four objections to his positions. Surprisingly, Maimonides’ rejoinder opened with an unusual rhymed prose epistle with effusive praise for his correspondents and artistic and complex language. In this book, Charles Sheer offers the first annotated translation of the entire epistle: he uncovers the biblical and midrashic passages modified by Maimonides that became the language of his Iggeret, and explicates its ideas in the context of Maimonides’ other works and compositions of the late Middle Ages.  He illustrates how Maimonides, in a most personal fashion, shared with these scholars his ideological struggle between his love for Torah study and “hokhmah” (philosophy, wisdom).  This Grand Epistle reveals much about this towering figure and provides a moving portrait of him during his last decade.

A Winner of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa 2023 Bernard Lewis Prize

Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements, takes us through the first years of the third millennium (2000-2003), documenting how a radical inability of Westerners to understand the medieval mentality that drove Global Jihad prompted a series of disastrous misinterpretations and misguided reactions that have shaped our so-far unhappy century. These misinterpretations in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, contributed fundamentally to the ever-worsening moral and empirical disorientations of our information elites (journalists, academics, pundits). So while journalists reported Palestinian war propaganda as news (lethal journalism), they were also reporting Jihadi war propaganda as news (own-goal war journalism). These radical disorientations have created our current dilemma of pervasive information distrust, deep splits within the voting public in most democracies, the politicization of science, and the inability of Western elites to defend their civilization, and instead, to stand down before an invasion.

In Shoah through Muslim Eyes, the author discusses her journey with Judaism as a Muslim.

Her book is based on the struggle of anti-Semitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with survivors. Rejecting polemical myths about the Holocaust and Jews, Afridi offers a new way of creating understanding of two communities through the acceptance and enormity of the Shoah. Her journey is both personal and academic in which the reader can find nuances of her belief in Islam, principles of justice, and the loneliness of such a journey. The chapters discuss the Holocaust and how it is unprecedented, interviews with survivors, antisemitism and Islamophobia, and Islam and memory. Afridi includes Muslim-Arab narratives that enhance the reach of the Holocaust into Muslim lands under the Vichy and Nazi government.

One of the most basic questions for any legal system is that of methodology: how one interprets, analyzes, weighs, and applies a mass of often competing legal rules, precedents, practices, customs, and traditions to reach final determinations and practical guidance about the correct legal-prescribed course of action in any given situation. Questions of legal methodology raise not only practical concerns, but theoretical and philosophical ones as well. We expect law to be more than the arbitrary result of a given decision maker’s personal preferences, and so we demand that legal methodologies be principled as well as practical. These issues are especially acute in religious legal systems, where the stakes are raised by concerns for respecting not just human, but divine law. Despite this, the major scholars and codifiers of halakhah, or Jewish law, have only rarely explicated their own methods for reaching principled legal decisions. This book explains the major jurisprudential factors driving the halakhic jurisprudence of Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein, twentieth-century author of the Arukh Hashulchan—the most comprehensive, seminal, and original modern restatement of Jewish law since Maimonides. Reasoning inductively from a broad review of hundreds of rulings from the Orach Chaim section of the Arukh Hashulchan, the book teases out and explicates ten core halakhic principles that animate Rabbi Epstein’s halakhic decision-making. Along the way, it compares the Arukh Hashulchan methodology to that of the Mishna Berura. This book will help any reader understand important methodological issues in both Jewish and general jurisprudence.

Israel and the Nations: The Bible, The Rabbis, and Jewish-Gentile Relations explores the Jewish theology and law (Halakhah) relating to non-Jews. It analyzes biblical, talmudic, medieval, and contemporary Jewish writings about gentiles and their religions.

The Bible challenges the Jewish people to be “a blessing for all the families of the earth.” Yet throughout history, Jewish experience with gentiles was complex. In the biblical and talmudic eras most gentiles were assumed to be idolators. In the Middle Ages most rabbis considered their Christian neighbors idolators, and Christian enmity sharpened the otherness Jews felt toward their Christian hosts. Muslims were monotheists, but Jewish-Muslim relations were sometimes positive and at other times difficult. With the advent secular tolerance in modernity, Jews found themselves in a new relationship with their gentile neighbors. How should Jews relate to gentiles today, and what are the bounds of Jewish tolerance and religious pluralism?

The book will interest both Jewish laypersons familiar with Jewish tradition as well as scholars of theology and interfaith relations

When Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Code of Jewish Law) reached Lunel, France, a group of scholars composed twenty-four objections to his positions. Surprisingly, Maimonides’ rejoinder opened with an unusual rhymed prose epistle with effusive praise for his correspondents and artistic and complex language. In this book, Charles Sheer offers the first annotated translation of the entire epistle: he uncovers the biblical and midrashic passages modified by Maimonides that became the language of his Iggeret, and explicates its ideas in the context of Maimonides’ other works and compositions of the late Middle Ages.  He illustrates how Maimonides, in a most personal fashion, shared with these scholars his ideological struggle between his love for Torah study and “hokhmah” (philosophy, wisdom).  This Grand Epistle reveals much about this towering figure and provides a moving portrait of him during his last decade.

“This is a rich col­lec­tion that pro­vides a win­dow into many of the key debates that have raged, and still rage, in the Jew­ish world. It rais­es many provoca­tive ques­tions about the nature of con­tem­po­rary Judaism and its future.” —Martin Green, Jewish Book Council

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change. With over eighty excerpts from key primary source texts and insightful corresponding essays by leading scholars, on topics of history and memory, Jewish politics and the public square, religion and religiosity, and identities and communities, The New Jewish Canon promises to start conversations from the seminar room to the dinner table. 

The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook of the Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist for the contemporary period and the recent past, canonizing our most important ideas and debates of the past two generations; and just as importantly, stimulating debate and scholarship about what is yet to come.

Coherent Judaism begins by excavating the theologies within the Torah and tracing their careers through the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Any compelling, contemporary Judaism must cohere as much as possible with traditional Judaism and everything else we believe to be true about our world. The challenge is that over the past two centuries, our understandings of both the Torah and nature have radically changed. Nevertheless, much Jewish wisdom can be translated into a contemporary idiom that both coheres with all that we believe and enriches our lives as individuals and within our communities. 

Coherent Judaism explains why pre-modern Judaism opted to privilege consensus around Jewish behavior (halakhah) over belief. The stresses of modernity have conspired to reveal the incoherence of that traditional approach. In our post-Darwinian and post-Holocaust world, theology must be able to withstand the challenges of science and history. Traditional Jewish theologies have the resources to meet those challenges. Coherent Judaism concludes by presenting a philosophy of halakhah that is faithful to the covenantal aspiration to live long on the land that the Lord, our God, has given us.

A.D. Gordon was one of the most interesting and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Quest for Life presents Gordon’s philosophy, which was developed in Hebrew at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the English reading public. It discusses the role played by the early Land of Israel pioneering labor community in the development of his thought, and offers a new understanding of its major themes, including: the relation of humanity to nature, human freedom, ethnicity, religion, and ethics. In addition, the book discusses the repercussions of Gordon’s thought with respect to contemporary civilization while suggesting its implicit ‘quest for life’ as the basis for a re-evaluation of such topics as the meaning of human life, Jewish peoplehood and the idea of a Jewish homeland.

The Jewish Metropolis: New York City from the 17th to the 21st Century covers the entire sweep of the history of the largest Jewish community of all time. It provides an introduction to many facets of that history, including the ways in which waves of immigration shaped New York’s Jewish community; Jewish cultural production in English, Yiddish, Ladino, and German; New York’s contribution to the development of American Judaism; Jewish interaction with other ethnic and religious groups; and Jewish participation in the politics and culture of the city as a whole. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field, and includes a bibliography for further reading. The Jewish Metropolis captures the diversity of the Jewish experience in New York.

“Richard Landes offers a sharply-drawn, no-holds-barred dissection of today’s campus politics at its worst. As a case study of the damage done to academic integrity by the intrusion of anti-Zionism into college life, his book is a must-read.”  —Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University

This compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who was accused by students and faculty of having “directly condoned the extermination of a people” based on a deliberate misreading of his 2015 Facebook post on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Salem on the Thames captures the events as they unfolded and discusses topics such as Western sentiments concerning Israeli-Palestinian relations, academics and free speech, antisemitism and diversity on the college campus, and social media and politics. The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards “public shaming” reminiscent of the Salem witch trials that deeply compromises the integrity of academia.

This compelling volume focuses on the story of Andrew Pessin, a tenured philosophy professor at Connecticut College, who was accused by students and faculty of having “directly condoned the extermination of a people” based on a deliberate misreading of his 2015 Facebook post on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Salem on the Thames captures the events as they unfolded and discusses topics such as Western sentiments concerning Israeli-Palestinian relations, academics and free speech, antisemitism and diversity on the college campus, and social media and politics. The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards “public shaming” reminiscent of the Salem witch trials that deeply compromises the integrity of academia.

In Shoah through Muslim Eyes, the author discusses her journey with Judaism as a Muslim.

Her book is based on the struggle of anti-Semitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with survivors. Rejecting polemical myths about the Holocaust and Jews, Afridi offers a new way of creating understanding of two communities through the acceptance and enormity of the Shoah. Her journey is both personal and academic in which the reader can find nuances of her belief in Islam, principles of justice, and the loneliness of such a journey. The chapters discuss the Holocaust and how it is unprecedented, interviews with survivors, antisemitism and Islamophobia, and Islam and memory. Afridi includes Muslim-Arab narratives that enhance the reach of the Holocaust into Muslim lands under the Vichy and Nazi government.

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.