During the formative age of Judaism, the first seven centuries CE, the great rabbis thought deeply about beginnings in light of endings. They imposed upon their sequential reading of each passage the accumulated results of their reflection about all passages. Thus, they encompassed Scripture, so as to describe the world as God had intended it to be. This act of intellect resulted in two distinct, ahistorical media of thought and expression, the Halakhah, law, and Aggadah, lore. The author provides three systematic accounts of the Halakhic reading, and two Aggadic accounts. The Halakhic accounts cover [1] Work and Rest, [2] Ownership and Possession, Eden and the Land, and [3] Ownership and Possession in the Household. The Aggadic accounts pertain to [1] the Six Days of Creation, and [2] Adam and Eve.

In this book, Samuel Lebens takes the three principles of Jewish faith, as they were proposed in the fifteenth century by Rabbi Joseph Albo, and seeks to scrutinise and refine them with the tool-kit of contemporary analytic philosophy. What could it mean for a perfect being to create a world out of nothing? Could such a world be anything more than a figment of God's imagination? What is the Torah, and what must a person believe before it would make sense to treat it as Orthodox Judaism does? What does Judaism expect from a Messiah, and what would it mean for a world to be redeemed? These questions are explored in conversation with a wide array of Jewish sources - the Bible, Philo, the Rabbis of the Mishna and Talmud, the medieval rationalists and mystics, the Hassidim, and more, with an eye towards diverse fields of contemporary research, such as cosmology, logic, the ontology of literature, and the metaphysics of time. The Principles of Judaism articulates the most fundamental axioms of Orthodox Judaism in the vernacular of contemporary philosophy.

The oldest of the world’s major faiths, Judaism as practiced today represents a tradition that goes back nearly 6,000 years. Accessible and wide-ranging, Judaism: The Basics is a must-have resource covering the stories, beliefs and expressions of that tradition. Key topics covered include: the Torah Israel – the state and its people Passover Reform Judaism, Orthodox Judaism and Zionism the impact of the Holocaust. With a glossary of terms and extensive suggestions for further reading, Judaism: The Basics is an essential guide through the rich intricacies of the Jewish faith and people.

"Judaism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and it has preserved its distinctive identity despite the extraordinarily diverse forms and beliefs it has embodied over the course of more than three millennia. A History of Judaism provides the first truly comprehensive look in one volume at how this great religion came to be, how it has evolved from one age to the next, and how its various strains, sects, and traditions have related to each other. In this magisterial and elegantly written book, Martin Goodman takes readers from Judaism's origins in the polytheistic world of the second and first millennia BCE to the temple cult at the time of Jesus. He tells the stories of the rabbis, mystics, and messiahs of the medieval and early modern periods and guides us through the many varieties of Judaism today. Goodman's compelling narrative spans the globe, from the Middle East, Europe, and America to North Africa, China, and India. He explains the institutions and ideas on which all forms of Judaism are based, and masterfully weaves together the different threads of doctrinal and philosophical debate that run throughout its history."--

What does it mean to be a Jew in the twenty-first century? Exploring the multifaceted and intensely complicated characteristics of this age-old, ever-changing community, Judaisms examines how Jews are a culture, ethnicity, nation, nationality, race, religion, and more. With each chapter revolving around a single theme (Narratives, Sinais, Zions, Messiahs, Laws, Mysticisms, Cultures, Movements, Genocides, Powers, Borders, and Futures) this introductory textbook interrogates and broadens readers’ understandings of Jewish communities. Written for a new mode of teaching—one that recognizes the core role that identity formation plays in our lives—this book weaves together alternative and marginalized voices to illustrate how Jews have always been in the process of reshaping their customs, practices, and beliefs. Judaisms is the first book to assess and summarize Jewish history from the time of the Hebrew Bible through today using multiple perspectives. Ideal for classroom use, Judaisms provides a synthetic and coherent alternative understanding of Jewish identity for students of all backgrounds; focuses on both the history of and potential futures for physical and ideological survival; includes an array of engaging images, many in color; offers extensive online resources including notes, key terms, a timeline of major texts, and chapter-by-chapter activities for teaching.

The "Review of Rabbinic Judaism," the first and only annual to focus upon Rabbinic Judaism in particular, will publish principal articles, essays on method and criticism, systematic debates ("Auseindersetzungen"), occasional notes, long book reviews, reviews of issues of scholarly journals, assessments of textbooks and instructional materials, and other media of academic discourse, scholarly and educational alike. The "Review" fills the gap in the study of Judaism, which is left by the prevailing division of Rabbinic Judaism among the standard historical periods (ancient, medieval, modern) that in fact do not apply; and by the common treatment of the Judaism in bits and pieces (philosophy, mysticism, law homiletics, institutional history, for example). No annual in "Jewish studies" focuses upon the study of religion, let alone upon the single most important Judaism of all time.

"The Jewish people endured three crises during the formation of what would become the Jewish canon, and these significantly shaped their religion. The destruction of Solomon's Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E., the destruction of Herod's Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., and the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of Rome in 363 C.E. each signaled the apparent end of Jewish religion. Instead of succumbing to defeat and despair, Judaism arose, transformed and strengthened, from each crisis as a result of its religious leaders' reinterpretation of its sacred texts." "In Transformations, Jacob Neusner reasons that the Jewish canonical writings - the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash - illustrate Judaism's response to these three social, cultural, and political crises. Faced with these catastrophic events, the Rabbinic sages explored anew the paradigms of piety and practice which they had received from previous generations. The result was that they discovered a truth both continuous with the past and responsive to the unanticipated crisis - a truth that carved out a path for the future. This process, represented in the Jewish canon, continues to define modern Judaism. Jacob Neusner's thesis is this: When faced with defeat, Judaism reaches a turning point and, in an act of stubborn affirmation, Judaism is transformed."--BOOK JACKET.

"Jewish-Christianity" is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

To date, scholars have skilfully discussed aspects of Polqar’s thought, and yet none of the existing studies offers a comprehensive examination that covers Polqar’s thought in its entirety. This book aims to fill this lacuna by tracing and contextualizing both Polqar’s Islamic sources (al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) and his Jewish sources (Maimonides and Isaac Albalag). The study brings to light three of Polqar’s main purposes; (1) seeking to defend Judaism as a true religion against Christianity; (2) similarly to his fellow Jewish Averroists, Polqar wishes to defend the discipline of philosophy. By philosophy, Polqar means Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. As a consequence, he offers an Averroistic interpretation of Judaism and becomes one of the main representatives of Jewish Averroism; (3) defending his philosophical interpretation of Judaism. From a social and political point of view, Polqar's unreserved embrace of philosophy raised problems within the Jewish community; he had to refute the Jewish traditionalists’ charge that he was a heretic, led astray by philosophy. The main objective guiding this study is that Polqar advances a systematic naturalistic interpretation of Judaism, which in many cases does not agree with traditional Jewish views. "Haliva’s lucid, learned, and incisive monograph on the thought of Isaac Polqar is the first comprehensive study devoted to this important, but neglected fourteenth century Jewish Averroist. It makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of post-Maimonidean medieval Jewish philosophy. Haliva convincingly shows that while Polqar claims to follow Maimonides, he consistently pushes his thought in a more radical direction, offering a severely naturalistic interpretation of Jewish religious principles and refusing to make any concessions to more traditional theological modes of thought. Her study leads us to ask whether it is possible to uphold such an uncompromising philosophical and naturalistic reading of Judaism as that of Polqar, that is, whether it does justice to the Jewish religious principles it purports to interpret and enables us to maintain the authority of traditional Halakhah." Lawrence J. Kaplan, McGill University, Montreal "Racheli Haliva's excellent book is the first comprehensive study of the philosophy of Isaac Polqar (late thirteenth-early fourteenth century). Polqar emerges as a radical and creative thinker–a fascinating link between the philosophy of Averroes and Maimonides and that of Spinoza." Warren Zev Harvey, Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Haliva's groundbreaking book is the first comprehensive study of Polqar's intellectual world, forged in the crucible of the late Middle Ages where Greco-Arabic philosophy and the Maimonidean legacy meet inner-Jewish and anti-Christian polemics. Polqar, Haliva demonstrates, was a formidable thinker in his own right who critically engages with Maimonides and Averroes. At the same time, he defends the Jewish faith as the only true religion of reason--against Kabbalists and Jewish traditionalists and against his former teacher, Abner of Burgos, whose conversion to Christianity was a major intellectual shock. This is a meticulously researched and lucidly argued scholarly contribution that fills a crucial gap in the history of Jewish philosophy." Carlos Fraenkel, McGill University, Montreal

A Road to Christianity, Islam and Judaism contains brief overviews of the three major religions in the world today. They are the Islamic religion, the Judaic religion, and the Christian religion. These overviews, with supporting biblical and Quranic verses, are related in the form of roads with their twists, turns, ruts, and potholes. Many roads or overviews are unknown or learned based on the learners heritage (e.g., original sin). It would take a person a lifetime to research all the minutiae connected with the history, tenets, beliefs, congregations, sects, churches, mosques, synagogues, and people of the three major religions. The three religions have many differences, as well as many similarities. All three religions believe in the same god/creator and Old Testament characters, except by different names. All three religions believe in resurrections, the afterlife, Adam and Eve, and messengers.