Abraham Mapu (1808-1867) was one of the first, & finest, of the novelists to write in Hebrew. Heavily influenced by a wide range of sources, the Bible, the Romantic Novelists, & renewed pride in ancient Jewish history, his works recall the finest works of writers such as Flaubert & other great romantic novelists.

Is the Bible actually a love story between a deity and a people? And what does this love story have to do with the modern world? In With All Thine Heart distinguished cultural critic Ilan Stavans speaks to freelance writer Mordecai Drache about love in the Bible. Presented in an engaging, conversational format and touched with striking artwork, the textured dialogue between Stavans and Drache is meant to show how the Bible is a multidimensional text and one that, when considered over the course of history, still has the power to shape our world. The theme of love provides the connective tissue that binds this work. Addressing a wide range of topics, from biblical archaeology and fundamentalism to Hollywood movies, lexicography, and the act of praying, With All Thine Heart suggests that the Hebrew Bible is a novel worth decoding patiently, such as one does with classics like Don Quixote de la Mancha, In Search of Lost Time, and Anna Karenina. Similar to the protagonists in these tales, biblical characters, although not shaped with the artistic nuance of modern literature, allow for astonishing insight. This exploration of love through the pages of the Bible--organized chronologically from Genesis to Exodus and followed by insightful meditations on the Song of Songs and the Book of Job--is a delightful intellectual and spiritual treat . . . Shema Ysrael!

"Through its close reading and empathetic commentary, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption, and the Way of Israel vivifies this lovable Biblical text, enabling willing readers to vicariously experience how a widowed woman from a despised nation becomes the ancestress of the greatest Israelite king. But the Book of Ruth is more than a Cinderella story, a woman's rise from misery to glory. Read in this wisdom-seeking exploration by granddaughter and grandfather, it sheds light on enduring questions of human life and the Hebrew Bible's answers to these questions: the meaning of national membership and identity, the relative status of female friendship and marital love, the nature and limits of familial obligations, the importance of attachment to the land, and (especially) the redemptive powers for human life of childbirth and of loving-kindness and loyal devotion, both human and divine"--

These volumes contain most of the papers of the late Jonas C. Greenfield written in English, with source and lexeme indexes, and is intended for scholars and students of the Ancient Near East, Aramaic, Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Semitic philology. Greenfield published numerous articles in a wide range of journals, some of them fairly inaccessible. He himself had begun to collect his papers, with the aim of revising and republishing them, when his sudden death intervened. It is the privilege of the editors, two close friends of Greenfield and one of his former students, to present this collection to the public. This collection shows the wealth, breadth, and creativity of Greenfield's substantial scholarship, as well as his desire to collaborate with his colleagues in academic pursuits. Jonas Greenfield Biography Prof. Jonas C. Greenfield was born in New York City in 1926 and completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1956. In addition to a distinguished teaching career that spanned nearly two and a half decades at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he was a member of the team of translators of the Jewish Publication Society and of the Dead Sea Scrolls Supervisory Committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority, an honorary fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Royal Asiatic Society; in 1994, he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He died unexpectedly in his sleep in 1995. Jonas was distinguished by his love of learning and his high regard for his colleagues and students--the values by which he lived as a man and a scholar.

What are the origin and meaning of the words "greed is idolatry" found in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5? In what sense are the greedy guilty of idolatry? Many different answers have been given to this question throughout the history of interpretation. In fact, a consensus exists on only one score - that the expression serves to vilify greed. Brian Rosner takes on the challenge of interpretation by tackling the phrase as a metaphor, structuring his argument around an intriguing comparison to mountain climbing. From this vantage point, he offers a history of interpretation of the phrase, including a study of the origin of the concept of idolatrous greed in biblical and Jewish sources. Rosner concludes that the comparison of greed with idolatry teaches that to desire to acquire and keep for oneself more money and material things is an attack on God's exclusive right to human love, trust, and obedience. With this work comes an understanding of familiar terms - "greed," "idolatry," and even "God"--Challenging both the church as a whole and individual believers to consider the far-ranging implications of our materialistic world. --From publisher's description.

This is the first of two volumes of edited sermons spanning the greater part of the second half of the twentieth century, and the first major collection of sermons from a Liberal Jewish point ofview produced in Britain since Claude G. Montefiore's Truth in Religion of 1906. It combines forthrightly radical thinking with spirituality, love of Jewish tradition, and an abundance of carefully documented "ations from classical Jewish sources. This combination yields many fresh insights into the interpretation of Scripture, as examined in Part I, and the significance ofthe Jewish festivals dealt with in Part II, and brings out the relevance of both to present-day intellectual and social issues. Both Parts will be found to contain many original ideas, novel formulations, and occasional touches of humour.