Excellent Book

During the course of the twelfth century, increasing numbers of Jews migrated into western Christendom from Islamic lands. But western Christendom was both appealing and threatening to the Jewish immigrants. Indeed, western Christendom was entering a phase of intense missionizing activity, some of which was directed at the long-term Jewish residents of Europe and the Jewish newcomers. The writings of twelfth- and thirteenth-century leaders from southern France and northern Spain constitute the first evidence of Jewish anti-Christian polemics from within western Christendom. These leaders were fully cognizant of the core Christian thrusts, described them in detail for their co-religionists, and rebutted them carefully. This study recreates some of the clarification and rebuttal, and examines the techniques of persuasion adopted by the Jewish polemicists in order to reassure their Jewish readers of the truth of Judaism and the error of Christianity.

Le Proche et Le Lointain (literally The Near and the Far) was first published in France in 1981, and this translation is available to English-speaking readers one of the most significant European contributions to Elizabethan cultural history to appear in recent years. In the conjunction - or conflict - of the 'near' and the 'far' Professor Marienstras discerns an underlying dichotomy of major importance to an understanding of the Shakespearean world. Othello, The Tempest and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore are amongst the works discussed in detail in this highly imaginative series of inter-disciplinary studies, and the author sees in the juxtaposition of nature and culture, sacrifice and sacrilege, purity and impurity, nourishment and poison a structural opposition that renders unified and comprehensible thematic material at first sight random and meaningless.

Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.

Maimonides' vision of Judaism was deeply elitist, but at the same time profoundly universalistic. He was highly critical of the regnant Jewish culture of his day, which he perceived as so heavily influenced by ancient Jewish mysticism as to be debased. While focusing on that critique, Kellner skilfully and accessibly demonstrates how Maimonides used philosophy in order to purify a corrupted and paganized religion and to present distinctions fundamental to Judaism as institutional, sociological, and historical, rather than ontological. In Maimonides' hands, metaphysical distinctions are translated into moral challenges.

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; The Maurice Amado Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Tales from Arab Lands presents tales from North Africa, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the latest volume of the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. This is the third book in the multi-volume series in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg?s timeless classic, Legends of the Jews . The tales here and the others in this series have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in Honor of Dov Noy, at The University of Haifa, a treasure house of Jewish lore that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust, migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation of these tales impossible. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition.

Discusses Jewish identity in America as reflected in the culture of immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Self-hatred or, at least, ambivalence about oneself in the face of native American values is one theme. Ch. 5 (pp. 98-125), "To Make 'a Jew': Projecting Antisemitism in Post-War America", analyzes two novels - Arthur Miller's "Focus" and Saul Bellow's "The Victim" - that explore the psychosocial dimensions of postwar antisemitism. They raise the question whether possibilities of Jewish-Gentile relations might lead to personal and social renovation. In "Focus", a crypto-fascist antisemite who has internalized racist stereotypes finally identifies symbolically as a Jew. In "The Victim", both Jew and Gentile partially overcome their mutual stereotyping. The main Jewish protagonist also overcomes some negative aspects of his self-image.

How is it possible, after the Shoah, to declare one's faith in the God of Israel? Breaking the Tablets is David Weiss Halivni's eloquent and insightful response to this question. Halivni, Auschwitz survivor and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the past century, declares that at this time of God's near absence, Jews can still observe the words of the Torah and pray for God to come near again.--Product description

We think we know what upward mobility stories are about--virtuous striving justly rewarded, or unprincipled social climbing regrettably unpunished. Either way, these stories seem obviously concerned with the self-making of self-reliant individuals rather than with any collective interest. In Upward Mobility and the Common Good , Bruce Robbins completely overturns these assumptions to expose a hidden tradition of erotic social interdependence at the heart of the literary canon. Reinterpreting novels by figures such as Balzac, Stendhal, Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Dreiser, Wells, Doctorow, and Ishiguro, along with a number of films, Robbins shows how deeply the material and erotic desires of upwardly mobile characters are intertwined with the aid they receive from some sort of benefactor or mentor. In his view, Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs becomes a key figure of social mobility in our time. Robbins argues that passionate and ambiguous relationships (like that between Lecter and Clarice Starling) carry the upward mobility story far from anyone's simple self-interest, whether the protagonist's or the mentor's. Robbins concludes that upward mobility stories have paradoxically helped American and European society make the transition from an ethic of individual responsibility to one of collective accountability, a shift that made the welfare state possible, but that also helps account for society's fascination with cases of sexual abuse and harassment by figures of authority. -- "Modern Language Quarterly"

Representing the spectrum of subfields within Jewish Studies, the contributing scholars to this volume use beginnings as a hermeneutic stance to analyze texts in their area. While each essay is a significant contribution to its own subfield - Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, Modern Jewish Thought, Feminist and Cultural Studies - the essays taken as a whole present new possibilities for exploring the space that is Jewish Studies and beginning an inquiry into what might constitute a definable hermeneutics of Jewish texts.

Statues of the god Priapus stood in Roman gardens to warn potential thieves that the god would rape them if they attempted to steal from him. In this book, Richlin argues that the attitude of sexual aggressiveness in defense of a bounded area serves as a model for Roman satire from Lucilius to Juvenal. Using literary, anthropological, psychological, and feminist methodologies, she suggests that aggressive sexual humor reinforces aggressive behavior on both the individual and societal levels, and that Roman satire provides an insight into Roman culture. Including a substantial and provocative new introduction, this revised edition is important not only as an in-depth study of Roman sexual satire, but also as a commentary on the effects of all humor on society and its victims.

From Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a comprehensive guide to comedy in the English literary canon. Beginning with a critical exploration of historical and philosophical theories of humour, the book then supplies close-readings of a wide range of major texts, authors and genres from the Medieval period to the present. The Comic Mode in English Literature examines such texts as: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Austen's Emma Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Amis's Lucky Jim. Covering poetry, prose and drama, this comprehensive guide will be essential reading for students of comic writing, literary history and genre.

"Essays on the literary structure, word play, and other literary facets of biblical and ancient near eastern literature, including Babylonian, Assyrian, and Ugaritic literature"--ECIP Summary.

Most ancient societies were patriarchal in outlook, but not all patriarchies are equally condescending toward women. Impelled by the gnawing question of whether the inferiority of women is integral to the Torah's vision, Sassoon sets out to determine where the Bible, the Talmud, and related literature, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls, sit on this continuum of patriarchal condescension. Of course, there are multiple voices in both Biblical and Talmudic literature, but more surprising is how divergent these voices are. Some points of view seem intent on the disenfranchisement and domestication of women, whereas others prove to be not far short of egalitarian. Opinions that downplay the applicability of the Biblical commandments to women and that strongly deprecate Torah study by women emerge from this study as arguably no more than the views of an especially vocal minority.

The renewed perception of Judaism's influenceJudaism today is too often thought to represent a religious backwater, a highly particularistic, religion with its own esoteric tales and traditions, practices and norms. First Christians, then Jews themselves, have succumbed to this characterization, resulting in dismissal of Judaism's universal religious significance. Bereft of its religious import, Judaism is increasingly thought merely an ethnic designationand a quickly dissipating one at that. Neusner pleas for vindication of "the universal character and appeal of Judaic monotheism in the mainstream of humanity." Of the three great monotheistic religions, only Judaism has survived without political power, military might, or great numbers of adherents and has done so because its method and message aim to persuade the world of God's dominion and the marks of God's rule.

Erich S. Gruen investigates a remarkable phenomenon in religious and literary history: the freedom with which Jewish writers in antiquity retold and recast, sometimes distorted or bypassed, biblical narratives that ostensibly had the status of sacred texts.

Book by Lichtenstein, Aharon