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This book explores Maimonides' rationale for crafting the tradition of the Mishneh Torah and the surprising way he put it to use. It examines many of the philosophical and ethical ideas animating the composition of such a list and discusses the manner by which Maimonides formulated positive commandments in the Mishneh Torah, suggesting new dimensions in Maimonides' legal theory.

Freedom from Violence and Lies is a collection of forty-one essays by Simon Karlinsky (1924-2009), a prolific and controversial scholar of modern Russian literature, sexual politics, and music who taught in the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures from 1964 to 1991. Among Karlinsky's full-length works are major studies of Marina Tsvetaeva and Nikolai Gogol, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin; editions of Anton Chekhov's letters; writings by Russian émigrés; and correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson. Karlinsky also wrote frequently for professional journals and mainstream publications like the New York Times Book Review and the Nation. The present volume is the first collection of such shorter writings, spanning more than three decades. It includes twenty-seven essays on literary topics and fourteen on music, seven of which have been newly translated from the Russian originals.

In the Jewish communal world, engaging 20- and 30-somethings is a hot button issue. As a member of this elusive generation, Bregman set out to compile a collection of personal essays and memoirs from Jewish 20- and 30-somethings across the country.

Containing analyses of everything from prisoner poetry to album covers, this book moves beyond the simplistic good/evil paradigm that often accompanies Gulag scholarship. While acknowledging the normative power of Stalinism-an ethos so hegemonic it wanted to harness the very mechanisms of inspiration-the volume also recognises the various loopholes offered by artistic expression.

Explores Maimonides' views regarding God, the commandments, astrology, medicine, the evil eye, amulets, magic, theurgic practices, omens, communicating with the dead, the messianic era, midrashic literature, and the oral law. It will be of interest in to all who are interested in the intellectual history of Judaism.

This extensively-researched collection of essays lucidly explores how members of the ever-beleaguered Jewish people grappled with their identities during the past century in the United States and in Eretz Israel, the new centers of Jewry's long historical experience. With the pivotal 1903 Kishinev pogrom setting the stage, the author proceeds to examine how the Land of Promise across the Atlantic exerted different influences on Abraham Selmanovitz, Felix Frankfurter, the founders of the American Council for Judaism, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Professor Penkower then shows how the prospect of nationalism in the biblical Promised Land engendered other tensions and transformations, ranging from the plight of Hayim Nahman Bialik, to rivalry within the Orthodox Jewish camp, to on-going strife between the political Left and Right over the nature of the emerging Jewish state.

In Creating the Empress, Vera Proskurina examines the interaction between power and poetry in creating the imperial image of Catherine the Great, providing a detailed analysis of a wide range of Russian literary works from this period, particularly the main Classical myths associated with Catherine (Amazon, Astraea, Pallas Athena, Felicitas, Fortune, etc.), as well as how these Classical subjects affirmed imperial ideology and the monarch's power. Each chapter of the book revolves around the major events of Catherine's reign (and some major literary works) that give a broad framework to discuss the evolution of important recurring motifs and images.

Both the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud depict a wide range of sorrowful situations tied to every level of society and to the complexities of human behaviour and the human condition. This explores more than 50 stories from both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds, focusing on these issues.

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the formative period of medieval Jewish philosophy, from its beginnings with Saadiah Gaon to its apex in Maimonides, when Jews living in Islamic countries and writing in Arabic were the first to develop a conscious and continuous tradition of philosophy.The book includes a dictionary of selected philosophic terms, and discusses the Greek and Arabic schools of thought that influenced the Jewish thinkers and to which they responded. The discussion covers: the nature of Jewish philosophy, Saadiah Gaon and the Kalam, Jewish Neo-Platonism, Bahya ibn Paqudah, Abraham ibn Ezra's philosophical Bible exegesis, Judah Ha-Levi's critique of philosophy, Abraham ibn Daud and the transition to Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and the controversy over Maimonides and philosophy.

Lev Tolstoy has held the attention of mankind for well over a century. A supremely talented artist, whose novels and short stories continue to entrance readers all over the world, he was at the same time a fearless moral philosopher who explored and challenged the fundamental bases of human society-political, economic, legal, and cultural. Hugh McLean, Professor Emeritus of Russian literature at the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying and writing about Tolstoy for many years. In these essays he investigates some of the numerous puzzles and paradoxes in the Tolstoyan heritage, engaging both with Tolstoy the artist, author of those incomparable novels, and Tolstoy the thinker, who, from his impregnable outpost at Yasnaya Polyana, questioned the received ideas and beliefs of the whole civilized world. In two concluding essays, "e;Tolstoy beyond Tolstoy,"e; McLean deals with the impact of Tolstoy on such diverse figures as Ernest Hemingway and Isaiah Berlin.

Examines the following questions: What is Halakhah, and what role has it played in the creative survival of the Jewish people?; Why is Halakhah no longer capable of functioning as it has until now?; and what sort of polity and religious culture can be recommended to replace the Halakhic tradition?

A Coat of Many Colors investigates Israel's first seven years as a sovereign state through the unusual prism of dress. Clothes worn by Israelis in the 1950s reflected political ideologies, economic conditions, military priorities, social distinctions, and cultural preferences, and all played a part in consolidating a new national identity. Based on a wide range of textual and visual historical documents, the book covers both what Israelis wore in various circumstances and what they said and wrote about clothing and fashion. Written in a clear and accessible style that will appeal to the general reader as well as students and scholars, A Coat of Many Colors introduces the reader both to Israel's history during its formative years and to the rich field of dress culture.

At approximately 364,000, Canada is home to one of the world's largest and most culturally creative Jewish communities, one of the few communities in the Diaspora that continues to grow demographically. This book covers topics from history and religion to the intellectual and cultural contributions of Canada's Jews.

With the Holocaust resonating as the "thick background," historical redress processes in Israel render a particularly challenging case. The simultaneous concern the Jewish community has with past, present and future redress campaigns, as both victim and perpetrator, is unique.

In Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, Dahlia Moore explores the social and cultural forces at play in Israeli society and their effects on the changing status of women. While delving into some of Israel's unique and influential forces, such as the army, religious sects, and recent immigration, Moore also broadens her perspective, juxtaposing the status of Israeli women with that of women in other Western societies. An excellent resource for scholars of gender and gender attitudes looking beyond North America and Europe.

Holy Russia, Sacred Israel examines how Russian religious thinkers, both Jewish and Christian, conceived of Judaism, Jewry and the 'Old Testament' philosophically, theologically and personally at a time when the Messianic element in Russian consciousness was being stimulated by events ranging from the pogroms of the 1880s, through two Revolutions and World Wars, to exile in Western Europe. An attempt is made to locate the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian, Russian and Western, Gnostic-pagan and Orthodox elements in Russian thought in this period. The author reflects personally on how the heritage of these thinkers - little analyzed or translated in the West - can help Orthodox (and other) Christians respond to Judaism (including 'Messianic Judaism'), Zionism, and Christian anti-Semitism today.

The astonishing revival of saint worship in contemporary Israel was ignited by Moroccan Jews, who had immigrated to the new country in the 1950s and 1960s. The Saints' Impresarios charts the vicissitudes of four new domestic shrines, each established by Moroccan-born men and women in a peripheral development town, following an exciting revelation involving a saintly figure. Each of the case studies discussing the life stories of the "e;saint impresarios"e; elaborates on a distinctive theme: dreams as psychocultural triggers for revelation; family and community responses to the initiative; female saint impresarios as healers; and the alleviation of life crises through the saint's idiom. The initiatives are evaluated against the historical background of Jews in Morocco and the sociopolitical and cultural changes in present-day Israeli society. The original Hebrew edition garnered the coveted Bahat Prize (Haifa University Press) for best academic book in 2006. For readers interested in Israel and Jewish Studies, folk religion and mysticism, cultural and psychological anthropology, and Moroccan Jews.

Science in the Bet Midrash explores the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), one of the most influential Jews of the last thousand years. While covering many aspects of his religious philosophy, these essays focus on the way Maimonides elucidated and expressed the universalistic thrust of the Jewish tradition. Maimonides construed the election of Israel as a challenge, not an endowment. This challenge is ultimately addressed to all human beings, not just to Jews.

Delving into Israel's multifaceted society, this title explores the many ethnic and religious communities that comprise modern Israel and the ways in which they interact and often misunderstand each other. It covers subjects such as Holocaust education, language rights, military service, and the balancing of religious with secular systems of law.

Over fifty years after the Holocaust, Marion Wyse explores interfaith dialogue between the Jewish and Christian communities and attempts to evaluate what goals these communities have reached and where they now stand. While many painful issues have been addressed and Jews and Christians in dialogue have achieved a solid respect for each other, the basic disagreement over the Christian designation of Jesus as the Jewish messiah still stands. Theologians have suggested varying approaches but none convince both parties. This work employs William James' radical empirical method to show that the original Jewish messianic concept, the Christian shift, and the Jewish repudiation of the shift, can each be seen as valid faith variants.

Reviews the history of religious Zionism from both a historical and ideological-theological perspective. The basic assumption is that religious Zionism cannot be fully understood solely through a historical description, or even from social, political, and philosophical vantage points. This is the first study on this subject to be published in English.

Aims to address the concept of Jewish peoplehood since the initial attempts of early 20th century Jewish intellectuals, Mordechai Kaplan and Salo Baron. This work offers both intellectual and practical frameworks for grappling with the policy outcomes of different understandings of the peoplehood concept.

Embarrassment and embracement are two moments in the reading, misreading and re-reading of scriptures, defined broadly to include both canonical and non-canonical texts. Papers dealing with different aspects of this phenomenon are part of a festschrift honoring Professor Harry Fox (LeBeit Yoreh) the originator of this seminal idea in the transmission of texts.

Analyses the writings of Rabbi Yechiel Mechel Halevi Epstein (1829-1908), author of the Arukh Hashulkhan, a bold and unusual approach to Jewish law. Based primarily on the original text of Rabbi Epstein's legal codes and homilies, this covers topics such as women, modernity, customs, and secular studies. It also analyses the rabbi's approach to Jewish law and Jewish life.

Like Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise, Schweid helps us grasp the potential for seeing radically new messages in this oldest of books, the Bible. The American Founding Fathers realized that the Bible offers strong support for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Socially, it offers a message of egalitarianism, especially in the provisions of the Jubilee. It is hardly an accident that two modern political movements found mottos ready at hand from the 25th chapter of Leviticus: "e;Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof"e; (engraved on the Liberty Bell), and "e;The land shall not be sold in perpetuity"e; (motto of the Jewish National Fund). Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God's creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally-a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

The fundamental book of Eliezer Schweid is a modern interpretation of the Bible as narrative and law which can reopen the dialogue of contemporary Jews with the Bible, from which a dynamic Jewish culture can continue to draw its inspiration. The approach draws at the same time from the philosophical modernism of Hermann Cohen, the dialogical philosophy of Buber, the religious phenomenology of Heschel, and the insights of contemporary Biblical scholars, including literary analysts of the Bible. Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God's creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally-a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

This classic work by early-20th-century Jewish humanist and scholar Isaac Heinemann surveys the crucial phases of Jewish thought concerning correct conduct as codified in the commandments. Heinemann provides his own systematic insights about the intellectual, emotional, pedagogical, and pragmatic reasoning advanced by the major Jewish thinkers. This volume covers Jewish thinkers from the Bible, rabbis and Hellenistic philosophers through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including Saadiah, Halevi, Maimonides, Albo, and many others. Heinemann addresses such questions as: "e;What were the Biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern rationales offered for the commandments in the course of Jewish thought?"e;

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture since 1880s explores the construction of the Jew's physical and ontological body in Russian culture as represented in literature, film, and non-literary texts from the 1880s to the present. With the rise of the dominance of biological and racialist discourse in the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian literary and cultural productions underwent a significant change, as these cultural practices recast the Jew not only as an archetypal "e;exotic"e; and religious or class Other (as in Romanticism and realist writing), but as a biological Other whose acts, deeds, and thoughts were determined by racial differences. This Jew allegedly had physical and psychological characteristics that were genetically determined and that could not be changed by education, acculturation, conversion to Christianity, or change of social status. This stereotype has become a stable archetype that continues to operate in contemporary Russian society and culture.