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The description of the wilderness Tabernacle (melekhet ha-mishkan) in Exodus exerted a lasting impact on ancient Jewish culture, evidenced by other texts influenced by its description in Exodus: the description of Solomons temple (I Kings 6-7), the sanctuary described in the Temple Scroll (cols. 3-13), the Eupolemus fragments, and Josephus. Philo of Alexandria first interprets the Tabernacle account in the Greek tradition of allegory wherein the tabernacle represents an archetype of the universe, that physical entity most approximating the divine abode. Apocalyptic literature frequently presents a celestial sanctuary, but the Temple rather than the Tabernacle is often the paradigm. Origen represents a typical patristic view where the tabernacle description is read completely figuratively. Tannaitic, amoraic, and geonic literature, on the other hand, provides scattered remarks on and explanations of biblical passages but no sustained exegesis of the tabernacle description. Baraita de-Melekhet ha-Mishkan presents the only systematic rabbinic exegesis of the tabernacle account to come from late antiquity or the Middle Ages. In contrast to Philo, the Church fathers, and the aggadic midrashim, this baraita assumes that the tabernacle and its furnishings need explanation as historical objects. The technology of construction, the calculation of measurements, and the delineation of architectural forms concern the framers of this document. Kirschner provides 150 pages of introductory analysis on this documents genre, structure, language, origin, date, and textual criticism before providing a critical edition with apparatus. Following the critical edition can be found Kirschners English translation, Genizah transcriptions, plates, an appendix of biblical citations within the baraita and one for biblical and postbiblical sources in general, bibliography, and general index.

Before the Enlightenment, before Spinoza had rejected traditional beliefs about the Bible, came the humanistic skeptics of the Renaissance. Alongside oft-cited Christian thinkers, Eliezer Eilburg now takes his rightful place. Comparable in view to Christopher Marlowe or Noel Journet, Eilburg perhaps uniquely represents the possibilities of Jewish skepticism in his day. Eliezer Eilburg: The Ten Questions and Memoir of a Renaissance Jewish Skeptic makes available for the first time a bilingual edition of two key works by the Jewish rationalist skeptic, kabbalist, and memoirist, Eliezer Eilburg. The Ten Questions-addressed to the Maharal of Prague and two of his colleagues-is one of the most radical statements of Jewish skepticism authored during the sixteenth century. Published here in its entirety, this text is especially remarkable for its critical approach to the Bible, foreshadowing later intellectual trends. Although many of his opinions were considered heretical by Jewish authorities, Eilburg argued that his doubts were innocent, and that there was room within Judaism for his skepticism. He presented himself as a penitent whose eyes had been opened through the study of medicine and philosophy and who had merited angelic visions and kabbalistic dreams. The second text, Eilburgs experimental memoir, is one of the very first modern Jewish efforts at autobiography. Put together from many smaller pieces, this patchwork of brag and bile is a unique document of sixteenth-century Jewish life. It is a testimony, if not to the "emergence of the individual" in this period, then at least to the emergence of new Jewish ways of imagining and writing about the self. Eilburg was an enigmatic man, a unique and as yet mostly unstudied Jewish thinker. Though his works are directed to audiences of Jews, and argue for the improvement of Judaism, this volume will appeal to historians and scholars of intellectual traditions both in and outside of Jewish studies. /Interview with Joseph Davis- Ten Questions of Eliezer Eilburg

Neglected until the close of the 19th century because it was misidentified, Vatican 30 constitutes an 13th century manuscript of midrash Bereshit Rabbah. Used by Theodor and Albeck in their research on the manuscript tradition of Bereshit Rabbah and considered it the preferred manuscript, lacking additions and deletions. Lewis M. Barth offers a thorough treatment of this manuscript, which is important not only for the history of midrashic traditions but also linguistically, given its closeness to the Aramaic of the Talmud Yerushalmi. He describes the manuscript, discusses its scribes, its relationship to other early witnesses, and offers sample chapters illustrating the work of four scribes.

The religious world knows Dr. Kaufmann Kohler as the erudite author of the most comprehensive pioneer work on "Jewish Theology" (1918), of the volumes "Heaven and Hell in Comparative Religion" (1923) and of the hundreds of articles and essays in the Jewish Encyclopedia and various other learned publications. These writings show his marked critical judgment and scientific objectivity. This is but one profile of the great master. The other is disclosed in his homiletical expressions, which in part comes to light in his "Hebrew Union College and Other Addresses" (1916) and in his "Studies, Addresses and Personal Papers" (1931). The scientific theologian was also a preacher of exceptional powers, one of the greatest in the Reform Jewish pulpit in America. The present volume consists of sermons and addresses selected from the literary remains of Dr. Kohler. Most were delivered from his own pulpit at Temple Beth-El in New York City, and a number of them as guest preacher at Adat Israel of Louisville, Kentucky, Wise Temple of Cincinnati, Rodef Shalom of Pittsburgh, and others. The Hebrew Union College addresses were delivered by Dr. Kohler in his capacity as president of that institution during opening and ordination exercises. His personal sermons and addresses are richly autobiographical. The memorial addresses and tributes contain valuable material on the history of modern Judaism. At the same time they show the breadth of Dr. Kohlers sympathies. The uncompromising champion of Reform appears as a lover of genuine orthodoxy. A life long opponent of political Zionism, he applauds the return of Jews to agricultural pursuits in Palestine.

Rabbinic tradition is in large part a tradition of law and jurisprudence. This tradition of law comprehends fields as diverse as the law of evidence and the dietary regimen, as laws on credit and debt and the laws of ritual purity. It follows naturally that many, if not most, of the great works of rabbinical literature are law books, commentaries on the law, and collections of cases. The principal legal code, or restatement, still authoritative among traditional Jews, is the Shulhan Arukh, compiled by Joseph b. Ephraim Karo of Safed (1488-1575) and glossed by Moses Isserles of Cracow (1520-1572). This work, published in four volumes, provided the rabbinic jurist or magistrate, as well as the learned layman, with a concise review of the various areas of Jewish law that might come to his attention. One such area of traditional Jewish law was the laws of buying and selling and the laws of fraud in sales. This particular domain within traditional Jewish commercial law is surprisingly intelligible and fascinating for modern students of Jewish tradition. Buying and selling are just as much a part of the modern world as they were of past ages. Moreover, the student of legal history or comparative law will find that this rabbinical code on sales and fraud in sales provides, at a glance, a view of the strata of Jewish legal development from the ancient period to the sixteenth century. Among the matters treated in this code are the formation of the agreement to buy and sell, the concept of acquisition as it relates to various types of property, legal capacity, and the requirement of good faith. The chapters on fraud reflect the moral and ethical values of Jewish tradition which are always implicit, and often explicit, in the rules of Jewish civil, criminal, and commercial legal codes. The material is clearly of interest to modern students of business ethics. A synopsis of the law of sale prefaces the work. It underscores some of the main features of this area of the law and furnishes some terminology and analysis of the material. While this synopsis does note some points of contrast and comparison with Roman law and medieval church law, it is not intended as a detailed historical or comparative study. It serves principally to introduce the text itself and establish some useful lines of understanding and classification. The translation of the laws of sale and fraud presented here has been prepared with the utmost care and attention to the technical nuances of legal terminology in both modern and ancient law. Its apparatus of notes and references includes material on the history of the printing of this translated portion of the Jewish legal tradition.

Over the first eight centuries of the Current Era, the religious cultures of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and many European lands were transformed by the worship of YHWH and the development from Judaism to Christianity and Islam. What were the Early Rabbis? explores the changes wrought after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and the impact of this on the new masters of law, life, and practice, the rabbis. Offering the reader an introduction to the earliest rabbinic movement near and soon after its initial movement, Jack N. Lightstone separates the book into two parts that consider early Rabbinic self-definition and how the Rabbis may have thought of themselves or were perceived. What views did these rabbis promote about their emerging authority? What in the surrounding and antecedent sociocultural context lent legitimacy to this profile? Addressing these and other questions, What were the Early Rabbis? sheds light on this social and religious phenomenon for the non-specialist reader.

This volume contains the lectures which the faculty of the Cincinnati School of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion presented to the larger community during the College Centennial Year. They are lectures by scholars moving out of the strict confines of their specialty and addressing a lay audience at large, spreading Jewish information filtered through the channels of Jewish learning and representing a discussion of contemporary problems and concerns in the light of scholarly findings. The convergence of the College Centennial and the national Bicentennial provided a unique occasion to assess the interrelationship between America and American Jewry. Each lecturer, therefore, applied the insights of his own discipline to the situation of contemporary Jewish life in America, elucidating both the challenges and the opportunities. The lectures deal with the American Jewish Experience: the history, the sociology, the artistic creativity, and the ways in which the ancient legacy of religious ideas and literature can thrive in a free democracy. The thirteen lectures published in this volume are by Professors Sheldon H. Blank, Herbert C. Brichto, Samuel Greengus, Robert L. Katz, Jacob R. Marcus, Michael A. Meyer, Eugene Mihaly, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Alvin J. Reines, Ellis Rivkin, Samuel Sandmel, Sylvan D. Schwartzman, and David B. Weisberg. Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, President of the College, contributed an introductory essay on "The Public Function of the Jewish Scholar."

In the 2002 edition of From Ideology to Liturgy, Eric Caplan examined Reconstructionisms interpretation and adaptation of the traditional Jewish liturgy and its creation of new prayer texts to convey and express the movements changing ideology. Further insight into Reconstructionist liturgy was gained through comparing these prayerbooks to the contemporaneous liturgies of Reform and Conservative Judaism and to the work of Jewish Renewal. In this new supplemented reprint edition, Caplan offers an expansive study of liberal Jewish prayerbooks published in the decades since From Ideology to Liturgy first appeared and revisits his earlier conclusions in light of more recent expanded access to Mordecai Kaplans diaries and archives.

A work entitled the "Book of Giants" figures in every list of the Manichaean "canon" preserved from antiquity. Both the nature of this work and the intellectual baggage of the third-century Persian prophet to whom it is ascribed remained unknown to scholars until 1943, when fragments of several Middle Iranian versions of the Book of Giants were published by W. B. Henning. Twenty-eight years later, at Qumran, J. T. Milik discovered several copies of a fragmentary Aramaic work which is unquestionably the precursor of the later Manichaean recension. One other important work, Manis "autobiography," the so-called Cologne Mani Codex, was brought to scholarly attention in 1970 with evidence that Mani spent his youth among the Elchasaites, a Judeo-Christian sect that observed the Sabbath, strict dietary laws, and rigorous purification practices. Although leading Orientalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have consistently stressed the Iranian component in Manis thought, Reeves argues, in the light of evidence drawn from the above-mentioned discoveries and from a rich panorama of other textual sources, that the fundamental structure of Manichaean cosmogony is ultimately indebted to Jewish exegetical expansions of Genesis 6:1-4. Reeves begins with an examination of the ancient testimonies about the contents of Manis Book of Giants. Then, using documents from Second Temple Judaism, classical Gnostic literature, Christian and Muslim heresiological reports, Syriac texts, and Manichaean writings, he provides a detailed analysis of both the Qumran and Manichaean rescensions of the work, demonstrating additional interdependencies and suggesting new narrative arrangements. He addresses a series of quotations from an unnamed Manichaean source found in a paschal homily of the sixth-century Monophysite patriarch Severus of Antioch and a narrative from Thoeodore bar Konai. In sum, Reeves demonstrates that the motifs of Jewish Enochic literature, in particular those of the story of the Watchers and Giants, form the skeletal structure of Manis cosmological teachings, and that Chapters 1 to 11 of Genesis fertilized Near Eastern thought, even to the borders of India and China.

The eighteen studies in this book continue the exploration of the Jewish sermon Saperstein began in his groundbreaking Jewish Preaching 1200-1800. His new research further illustrates the importance of this genre, largely ignored by modern scholarship, as an indispensible resource for understanding Jewish history, spirituality, and thought from the High Middle Ages to the beginning of the Emancipation in Europe. Sapersteins thematic studies explore the most important occasions for traditional rabbinic preaching: the Days of Awe and the Passover season. Two studies focus on the homiletical exegesis of classical Jewish texts, and two deal with the historical interaction of Christians and Jews. Saperstein discusses the diffusion of philosophical ideas through homiletics and identifies central conceptual issues presented in the Italian Jewish pulpit. Other essays include a critical analysis of the work of Saul Levi Morteira of Amsterdam, an examination of sermons in eighteenth-century Prague for indications of a traditional community in crisis, and homiletical evidence for a developing sense of patriotic identification with the state, even before Emancipation changed the legal status of the Jews. Saperstein also presents newly discovered sermonic texts in order to explore a full panoply of issues relating to historical context and genre. All are published for the first time with his annotated translation accompanying the Hebrew original. Included are a Guide for Preachers, sermons on repentance and on the Binding of Isaac, and three eulogies, the last a fascinating memorialization of the antisemitic empress Maria Theresa.

It is not common to think that Jews were interested in happiness or that Judaism has anything to say about happiness. On the contrary, the concept of happiness was a central concern of Jewish thinkers. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson shows that rabbinic Judaism regarded itself primarily as a prescription for the attainment of happiness, and that the discourse on happiness captures the evolution of Jewish intellectual history from antiquity to the seventeenth century. These claims make sense if one understands happiness as human flourishing on the basis of Aristotles thought in the Nichomachean Ethics. Linking virtue, knowledge, and well-being, Aristotles analysis of happiness can be traced in Jewish understanding of human flourishing as early as the Greco-Roman world, but the fusion of Greek and Judaic perspectives on happiness reached its zenith in in the Middle Ages in the thought of Moses Maimonides and his followers. Even the controversies about Maimonides ideas could be viewed as discussions about the meaning of happiness and the way to attain it within Judaism. Much of this book, then, concerns the reception of Aristotles Ethics in medieval Jewish philosophy. This book shows how a certain notion of happiness reflects the intellectual culture of a given period, including cultural exchanges among Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Demonstrating the discourse on happiness as a dramatic interplay between Wisdom and Torah, between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson presents, to specialists and non-specialists alike, a fascinating tour of Jewish intellectual history.

What will hold American Jewry and Israel together as the traditional "crisis glue" melts down and the familiar and practiced Israeli call for aid retreats to the remote background of each communitys existence? This is the question addressed by participants in a 1996 conference sponsored by the Center for North American Jewry of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Beyond Survival and Philanthropy is a collection of answers to this complex question offered by thirty-one leading Israeli and American scholars, educators, journalists, and communal leaders. They consider the cultural currents that have shifted American Jewish attitudes toward Israel from a mobilization model to a search-for-personal-meaning model and trace the historical roots of present tensions between religious and secular Jews in Israel. The views of Yehezkel Kaufmann, Ahad Ha-Am, and David Ben-Gurion are used to help differentiate between the state of exile, the sense of exile, and the recognition of exile. The place of Israel in American Jewish education and the treatment of American Jewry in Israeli schools is considered, and the backstory of recent efforts to streamline the institutional complex that raises funds for Israel and local needs in American Jewish communities is explored. Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Berg presents his view of how the changing natures of both Zionism and Judaism will affect all Jews in the twenty-first century. Sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, but always expanding upon these presentations, authors of the response essays in the volume reflect and underscore the values that precipitated this discussion: recognition of the unity of the Jewish people and of the continuing to share diverse views and opinions in order to formulate and address the crucial and sometimes radical choices that confront American Jewry and Israel.

The prohibition against lending on interest (Exodus 22:24) is a well-known biblical law: "If you lend to any one of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him." This prohibition was intended to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the unfortunate. In the course of time, it was seen to have consequences that militated against the economic welfare of Jewish society as a whole. As a result, Jewish law (halakhah) has over the centuries relaxed the biblical injunction, allowing interest charges despite the biblical prohibition. Hillel Gamoran seeks to explain how and when this law of high moral standing collapsed and fell over the course of the centuries. Talmudic rabbis believed that business agreements violated the biblical prohibition against lending in five areas: loans of produce, advance payment for the purchase of goods, buying on credit, mortgages, and investments. The Bible does not consider any of these activities, but all arise in postbiblical literature. How was the biblical law to be applied to situations that had not occurred in biblical times? And how could the rabbis allow these activities when they were hampered from doing so by the laws against lending on interest? To answer these questions, Gamoran examines the biblical prohibition against lending and postulates when it was written, why it was written, and to whom it applied. He then considers the early and later teachers of the Oral Law, the Tannaim and Amoraim, who expanded discussion of the ban in light of various business activities from 70 C.E. to 500 C.E. Finally, he explores how the original tannaitic proscriptions for each of the five activities were upheld or relaxed over the centuries. Each activity is considered in the period of the Geonim (ca. 650-1050), the Rishonim (ca. 1000-1500), and the Aharonim (ca. 1500-2000). For each period, Gamoran shows how the rabbis struggled with the law and with one another and used inventive interpretation to create the legal fictions necessary for business life to flourish.

How did Jewish women in sixteenth-century Poland learn all the rules, rituals, and customs pertaining to the sexual life of couples within the context of marriage? As in other areas of ritual life that concerned the household, it would seem that the primary source for the education of Jewish women was other women. But rabbinic law dictates that Jewish women who experience uterine bleeding are prohibited from having physical contact of any kind with their husbands, and the intricate laws of niddah (enforced separation) spell out exactly when and under what circumstances physical marital relations, even simple touching, can be resumed. Particularly difficult issues could be addressed only by rabbis or other learned men, since women rarely, if ever, attained the level of rabbinic scholarship necessary to pare the details of these complicated laws. To educate both men and women, but particularly women, in a more systematic and impersonal manner, the young rabbi Benjamin Slonik (ca. 1550-after 1620), who later became one of the leading rabbinic authorities in eastern Europe, harnessed the relatively new technology of printing and published a how-to book for women in the Yiddish vernacular. Seder mitzvot hanashim (The Order of Womens Commandments) illuminates the history of Yiddish printing and public education. But it is also a rare remnant of a direct interface between a member of the rabbinic elite and the laity, especially women. Sloniks text also sheds light on the history of Jewish law, particularly the reception of the Shulhan Arukh, an important legal code that had just been published. This volume makes available the 1585 edition of the Seder mitzvot hanashim in Yiddish and English. Fram sets Sloniks work in its bibliographical and historical contexts, demonstrating its relationship with the Shulhan Arukh, exploring how rabbis opposed formal education for women, considering how upheavals accompanying geographic shifts in the Ashkenazic community help explain how the womens commandments texts came to be used in Poland, and offering a treasure trove of information on the place and roles of women in Polish-Jewish society. Fram thus creates a composite picture of how Slonik, along with other men of his time, perceived the main audience for his work and sought to connect it to contemporary texts.

This series of five essays, published in 1921, offers insight into the tasks and difficulties confronting the rabbi in the roles of minister, teacher, and preacher. It also treats ethical problems that confront the rabbi, and offers an essay on the life of Isaac Mayer Wise. The collection aims to provide a guide for young rabbis, as well as sympathetic and helpful spirit of cooperation and understanding between pulpit and pew. The insights offered here draw on the rich life experience of Henry Berkowitz who, during his successful career as a leader of congregations, especially the prominent congregation Rodeph Shalom of Philadelphia, has always stood in the closest relationship with his congregants, and who has become an eminent spiritual force in American Jewry. They reflect his force and originality in the pulpit, thanks to depth of learning and heartfelt sincerity as well as rhetoric, and they are consequently worthy of the best academician as well as broadly accessible.

The "1007 Anonymous," an imaginative, brief text composed in the third or early fourth decade of the thirteenth century, illustrates the proper relations between Jews and their lay rulers and the pope. The pope, consistent in applying laws that both restricted and protected Jews, is seen as a just ruler. Kings and dukes, by contrast, were inconsistent and capricious, threatening Jewish life. This message had to be conveyed indirectly, and the "1007s" vehicle for doing so was a fictional story of murderous attack and forced conversion known as "The Terrible Event of the Year 1007." Yet, by examining the details of this story-which include a direct borrowing from The Quest of the Grail composed in 1221, and a reference to coinage that could only have been made during the early thirteenth century-the actual time-and the purpose-of the 1007s composition is revealed. Claims that the veracity of the story and the actuality of the supposed massacre are demonstrated thorough a comparison with the chronicles of Raoul Glaber and Ademar of Chabannes are shown to be incorrect, as part of Stows larger discussion of the correct approach to reading medieval Hebrew texts. Students of the 1007 have in fact inverted the order, using the 1007 to give credence to the fantasies of the two Christian writers. That the 1007 was not substantiable by such comparisons was demonstrated by the great French scholar Israel Levi at the turn of the twentieth century. No one, however, paid him heed-regrettably, for he was absolutely correct. Appropriately, this book is titled Levis Vindication.

Since the period in which the Jewish liturgy was standardized, there has hardly been a time when it was not somehow in a state of flux. Eric L. Friedland explores the countless ways that the Siddur, Mahzor, and Haggadah have been adjusted, amplified, or transformed so as to faithfully mirror modern Jews understanding of themselves, their place in society, and their sancta. In the tradition of liturgologists such as Elbogen, Idelsohn, and Petuchowski, Friedland focuses on latter-day adaptations of the prayerbook, giving proper recognition to the recent concern for intellectual integrity, cultural congruity, group and individual self-redefinition, and honest speech in Jewish prayer. The prayerbooks themselves are witnesses to innovation in the Jewish liturgy. From David Einhorns Olath Tamid (Baltimore 1855), to Isaac Mayer Wises Minhag Amerika (Cincinnati 1857) and Marcus Jastrows 1873 revision of Benjamin Szolds Abodath Israel (Baltimore 1864), Friedland analyzes evidence of creativity in British and American Reform Jewish liturgy. Various rites for the Days of Awe provide a particularly accurate glimpse of how Jewish communities here and abroad experience the sacred, consider eternal mysteries, and communicate with God. Friedland also sets the Reform Gates of Prayer in historical and denominational perspective by considering it alongside the Reconstructionist Kol Haneshamah, and the Israeli Progressive HaAvodah shebaLev. The state and direction of liturgical change emerges from a survey of commonalities and divergences in nineteenth- and twentieth-century prayerbooks in terms of Sephardic and mystical influences, attitudes toward the messianic hope, and collective sentiments of forgiveness or vengeance toward Israels enemies. Liturgical approaches to the commemoration of the Ninth of Av suggest that even an ancient fast day can recover relevance, credibility, and authenticity for Liberal Jews in the postmodern era.

In this volume of essays, eminent Jewish scholars from around the world present introductions to the different parts of the Bible for the wider public. The essays encompass a general introduction to the Torah in Jewish life, and include specific essays on each of the Five Books of Moses, as well as on the Haftarot, Neviim, and Ketuvim. The contributions provide an overview of the core content of each book as well as highlight central themes and the reception and relevance of these themes in Jewish life and culture past and present. These essays, informed by and based on the profound academic research of their authors, together provide an invaluable bridge between high-level academic insight and the study of the Bible both in synagogues and in homes.

Neste volume essencial para a vivência litúrgica e espiritual, o Cardeal Raniero Cantalamessa — um dos mais respeitados pregadores e intérpretes das Escrituras da atualidade — oferece uma síntese mag

Coleção com todos os sete livros da série Reflexos e Refrações do escritor e rabino Nilton Bonder, formando um complexo e completo panorama da Cabala e temas como o trabalho, a cura, a alegria, o sex