In Halakhah in a Theological Dimension, David Novak argues that Jewish law (halakhah) is grounded on a set of theological assumptions relating to the covenant between God and Israel. Novak’s study is fundamental for understanding both his later work on the Covenant and the continuing philosophical discussion of the relationship between religious law and theology.
Almost fifty years has passed since the publication of Marilyn J. Chiat’s Handbook of Synagogue Architecture (1982). Since then, there have been more finds and much more research on the issues that Chiat raises. Nevertheless, Chiat’s study still provides an important architectural guide to these synagogues.
People all over the globe are experiencing unprecedented and often hazardous situations as environments change at speeds never before experienced. This edited collection proposes that anthropological perspectives on landscape have great potential to address the resulting conundrums. The contributions build particularly on phenomenological, structuralist and multi-species approaches to environme…
The Biblical Herem: A Window on Israel’s Religious Experience, was a groundbreaking, and controversial, examination of the herem, a biblical mode of declaring something (objects, people, cities) proscribed. Stern here reconstructs how the herem relates to other modes of thinking, in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere in the Ancient Near East. The book contains a new preface by the author.
This volume is an accessible commentary to the Torah, putting each of the books into its ancient Near Eastern context.
The Book of the Pomegranate is a Hebrew edition of an important work by the Spanish kabbalist Moses de Leon (ca. 1240-1305). Sefer Ha-Rimmon, which was written in 1287, is particularly significant for study of the Zohar and the development of a theory of the commandment (mitzvot) and why one should do them.
Claude Montefiore (1858-1938) was among the major founders of Anglo-Liberal Judaism and the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and was known for his radical ideas and deep sympathy for Christian ideas. This volume explores why and how Montefiore engaged Christianity, and the reaction to this engagement by many contemporary Jewish luminaries.
In this book Kadushin offers a running commentary on sections of Leviticus Rabbah. His goal is not only to explicate individual sections of this Late Antique midrashic work, but also to highlight the basic conceptual framework within which the rabbis worked. Kadushin's commentary highlights the indeterminacy of belief and the genuine emphatic trends that distinguish rabbinic Judaism while also …
This study focuses on tractate Baba Mesi‘a’ of the Mishnah, which deals primarily with contracts of various kinds. Lapin's book focuses both on the literary traits of the tractate and, more importantly, attempts to tease out some of the implications of the tractate's depiction of social and economic relationships for an understanding of the history of later Roman Palestine.
This is the documentation of an Appalachian Consortium traveling exhibition of Appalachian Art produced in the 1970s. The project was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.