The Bible in the Bowls represents a complete catalogue of Hebrew Bible quotations found in the published corpus of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls. As our only direct epigraphic witnesses to the Hebrew Bible from late antique Babylonia, the bowls are uniquely placed to contribute to research on the (oral) transmission of the biblical text in late antiquity; the pre-Masoretic Babylonian vo…
This work investigates the different writing materials in use in Egypt during the 11th century and the reason for their diversity.; Readership: Academics and specialists working in the Cairo Genizah and in writing material characterization.
A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax introduces and abridges the syntactical features of the original language of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. An intermediate-level reference grammar for Biblical Hebrew, it assumes an understanding of elementary phonology and morphology, and it defines and illustrates the fundamental syntactical features of Biblical Hebrew that most intermediate-level readers s…
The attitude of Jews living in the medieval Christian world to Jews who converted to Christianity or to Christians seeking to join the Jewish faith reflects the central traits that make up Jewish self-identification. The Jews saw themselves as a unique group chosen by God, who expected them to play a specific and unique role in the world. This study researches fully for the first time the vario…
This book examines the significant role that memory failures play in early rabbinic literature. The rabbis who shaped Judaism in late antiquity envisioned the commitment to the Torah and its commandments as governing every aspect of a person’s life. Their vision of a Jewish subject who must keep constant mental track of multiple obligations and teachings led them to be preoccupied with forget…
The Eternal Dissident offers rare insight into one of the most inspiring and thought-provoking Reform rabbis of the twentieth century, Leonard Beerman, who was renowned both for his eloquent and challenging sermons and for his unrelenting commitment to social action.
The series Studies and Texts in Scepticism contains monographs, translations, and collected essays exploring scepticism in its dual manifestation as a purely philosophical tradition and as a set of sceptical strategies, concepts, and attitudes in the cultural field - especially in religions, perhaps most notably in Judaism. In such cultural contexts scepticism manifests as a critical attitude t…
This collection of close textual reading by scholars in a variety of areas, including rabbinics, Jewish history, education, Hebrew literature, Yidish literature, America Jewish literature, is a tribute to Arnold Band. Each Essay constitutes a new and original reading of a text. The texts analyzed are drawn from a wide range of genres: talmudic legal texts, hasidic tales, folklore, as well as mo…
This study analyzes the history of the festival of Sukkot during the second temple and rabbinic periods. While the Jerusalem temple stood, Sukkot was the preeminent festival and primary pilgrimage. The cult observed the festal week with sacrifices, processions, fertility rites and other temple rituals. The destruction of the second temple in 70 CE left rabbinic Judaism with the question of how …
This volume presents a translation and exegesis of Mishnah's Tractate Kilayim (Mixed Species) in an effort to discover the original meaning of the tractate. This volume aims to identify the sense which the formulators of the tractate's laws wished their rules to convey.