Reproduction of the original: The Makers and Teachers of Judaism by Charles Foster Kent

[T]he great contributions of the book of Job to the problem of suffering are: (1) A clear and scientific presentation of the problem; (2) a bold sweeping aside of the insufficient current theological explanations; (3) a vastly enlarged conception of Jehovah's character and rule; and (4) that attitude of faith which comes from as personal experience of God and which trusts unreservedly...-from "The Problem of the Book of Job"Bible students and classical scholars alike will find this 1911 work, from a renowned Biblical scholar of the early 20th century, an enlightening clarification of the most complex and confusing era in Israel's history, the period from the fall of Jerusalem to the death of Herod the Great. Sifting through the limited historical records that have come down to us-the memoirs of Nehemiah, the first book of the Maccabees, the histories of Josephus-as well as the literature that sprang from the anguish and suffering of the scattered Hebrews-including the poems of Isaiah, the Book of Job, and the Psalter-Kent offers insightful literary and historical commentary and critique on the major Jewish writings of the time.Also available from Cosimo Classics: Twelve Studies on the Making of a Nation: The Beginning of Israel's History, by Kent and Jeremiah Whipple JenksAmerican scholar CHARLES FOSTER KENT (1867-1925) was president of the Association of Biblical Instructors in American Colleges and Secondary Schools (now the American Academy of Religion) from 1910 to 1925. He is also the author of A History of the Jewish People.

More than any other person of his time, Isaac Leeser 0806-1868) envisioned the development of a major center of Jewish culture and religious activity in the United States. He single-handedly provided American Jews with many of the basic religious texts, institutions, and conceptual tools they needed to construct the cultural foundation of what would later emerge as the largest Jewish community in the history of the Jewish people. Born in Germany, Leeser arrived in the United States in 1824. At that time, the American Jewish community was still a relatively unimportant outpost of Jewish life. No sustained or coordinated effort was being made to protect and expand Jewish political rights in America. The community was small, weak, and seemingly not interested in evolving into a cohesive, dynamic center of Jewish life. Leeser settled in Philadelphia where he sought to unite American Jews and the growing immigrant community under the banner of modern Sephardic Orthodoxy. Thoroughly Americanized prior to the first period of mass Jewish immigration to the United States between 1830 and 1854, Leeser served as a bridge between the old native-born and new immigrant American Jews. Among the former, he inspired a handful to work for the revitalization of Judaism in America. To the latter, he was a spiritual leader, a champion of tradition, and a guide to life in a new land. Leeser had a decisive impact on American Judaism during a career that spanned nearly forty years. The outstanding Jewish religious leader in America prior to the Civil War, he shaped both the American Jewish community and American Judaism. He sought to professionalize the American rabbinate, introduced vernacular preaching into the North American synagogue, and produced the first English language translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. As editor and publisher of The Occident, Leeser also laid the groundwork for the now vigorous and thriving American Jewish press. Leeser's influence extended well beyond the American Jewish community An outspoken advocate of religious liberty, he defended Jewish civil rights, sought to improve Jewish-Christian relations, and was an early advocate of modern Zionism. At the international level, Leeser helped mobilize Jewish opinion during the Damascus Affair and corresponded with a number of important Jewish leaders in Great Britain and western Europe. In the first biography of Isaac Leeser, Lance Sussman makes extensive use of archival and primary sources to provide a thorough study of a man who has been largely ignored by traditional histories. Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism also tells an important part of the story of Judaism's response to the challenge of political freedom and social acceptance in a new, modern society Judaism itself was transformed as it came to terms with America, and the key figure in this process was Isaac Leeser.

An examination of how early twentieth-century American Jewish men experienced manhood and presented their masculinity to others. How did American Jewish men experience manhood, and how did they present their masculinity to others? In this distinctive book, Sarah Imhoff shows that the project of shaping American Jewish manhood was not just one of assimilation or exclusion. Jewish manhood was neither a mirror of normative American manhood nor its negative, effeminate opposite. Imhoff demonstrates how early twentieth-century Jews constructed a gentler, less aggressive manhood, drawn partly from the American pioneer spirit and immigration experience, but also from Hollywood and the YMCA, which required intense cultivation of a muscled male physique. She contends that these models helped Jews articulate the value of an acculturated American Judaism. Tapping into a rich historical literature to reveal how Jews looked at masculinity differently than Protestants or other religious groups, Imhoff illuminates the particular experience of American Jewish men. “There is so much literature—and very good scholarship—on Judaism and gender, but the majority of that literature reflects an interest in women. A hearty thank you to Sarah Imhoff for writing the other half of the story and for doing it so elegantly.” —Claire Elise Katz, author of Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism “Invariably lucid and engaging, Sarah Imhoff provides a secure foundation for how religion shaped American masculinity and how masculinity shaped American Judaism in the early twentieth century.” —Judith Gerson, author of By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees and Holocaust Memory

Note: This product is printed when you order it. When you include this product your order will take 5-7 additional days to ship.¬+¬+This complete and comprehensive resource for teachers new and experienced alike offers a "big picture" look at the goals of Jewish education.

The history of American Judaism in the years after the Civil War

Rabbinic theological language has made possible a vast range of discourse, on many subjects over long spans of recorded time and in diverse cultural settings. This theological dictionary defines the principal theological usages of Rabbinic Judaism as set forth in the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity, Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash-compilations. It systematically lays [1] the theological categories that are native to those writings; [2] cogent statements that can be made with them; [3] coherent propositions that those statements set forth and (within their own terms and framework) logically demonstrate as true and self-evident, both. Volume One of this dictionary covers vocabulary that permits the classification of religious knowledge and experience, and the organization and categorization of those data into intelligible and cogent sense-units. Volume Two shows how these classifications combine and recombine in sentences. We may deem these rules of theological discourse concerning religious experience to be the counterpart of syntax which words combine (or do not combine) with which other words, in what inflection or signaled relationship, and why. Volume Three shows how the theology accomplishes its goals of analysis, explanation, and anticipation in order to make sense of and impose meaning upon a subject. That marks the point at which constructive theology commences and systematic theology will find its language.

The Bible has played a critical role in the story of Judaism, modernity, and identity. Penny Schine Gold examines the arena of children's education and the role of the Bible in the reshaping of Jewish identity, especially in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, when a second generation of Eastern European Jews engaged the task of Americanizing Jewish culture, religion, and institutions. Professional Jewish educators based in the Reform movement undertook a multifaceted agenda for the Bible in America: to modernize it, harmonize it with American values, and move it to the center of the religious school curriculum. Through public schooling, the children of Jewish immigrants brought America home; it was up to the adults to fashion a Judaism that their children could take back out into America. Because of its historic role in the development of Judaism and its cultural significance in American life, Gold finds, the Bible provided Jews with vital links to both the past and the present. The ancient sacred text of the Bible, transformed into highly abridged and amended "Bible tales," was brought into service as a bridge between tradition and modernity.Gold analyzes these American developments with reference to the intellectual history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, innovations in public schooling and social theory, Protestant religious education, and later versions of children's Bibles in the United States and Israel. She shows that these seemingly simple children's books are complex markers of the pressing concerns of Jews in the modern world.

Samuel Fleischacker defends what the Enlightenment called 'revealed religion': religions that regard a certain text or oral teaching as sacred, as wholly authoritative over one's life. At the same time, he maintains that revealed religions stand in danger of corruption or fanaticism unless they are combined with secular scientific practices and a secular morality. The first two parts of Divine Teaching and the Way of the World argue that the cognitive and moral practices of a society should prescind from religious commitments — they constitute a secular 'way of the world', to adapt a phrase from the Jewish tradition, allowing human beings to work together regardless of their religious differences. But the way of the world breaks down when it comes to the question of what we live for, and it is this that revealed religions can illumine. Fleischacker first suggests that secular conceptions of why life is worth living are often poorly grounded, before going on to explore what revelation is, how it can answer the question of worth better than secular worldviews do, and how the revealed and way-of-the-world elements of a religious tradition can be brought together.