Not long ago, everyone knew that Judaism came before Christianity. More recently, scholars have begun to recognize that the historical picture is quite a bit more complicated than that. In the Jewish world of the first century, many sects competed for the name of the true Israel and the true interpreter of the Torah—the Talmud itself speaks of seventy—and the form of Judaism that was to be the seedbed of what eventually became the Christian Church was but one of these many sects. Scholars have come to realize that we can and need to speak of a twin birth of Christianity and Judaism, not a genealogy in which one is parent to the other. In this book, the author develops a revised understanding of the interactions between nascent Christianity and nascent Judaism in late antiquity, interpreting the two "new" religions as intensely and complexly intertwined throughout this period. Although the "officials" of the eventual winners in both communities—the Rabbis in Judaism and the orthodox leaders in Christianity—sought to deny it, until the end of late antiquity many people remained both Christians and Jews. This resulted, among other things, in much shared religious innovation that affected the respective orthodoxies as well. Dying for God aims to establish this model as a realistic one through close and comparative readings of contemporary Christian texts and Talmudic narratives that thematize the connections and differences between Christians and Jews as these emerged around the issue of martyrdom. The author argues that, in the end, the developing discourse of martyrology involved the circulation and exchange of cultural and religious innovations between the two communities as they moved toward sharper self-definition.

Seventy years after it took place, the Holocaust committed against the Jews of Europe during World War II continues to cast a giant shadow over humankind. Man's inhumanity to man is not a thing of the past. Genocidal action is still commonplace around the globe. Has humankind learned the lessons of the past? Is the human race doomed to live in a perpetual state of war and self-destruction? Explaining the Holocaust shows how, given the right circumstances, human beings can lose their humanity. Does that mean that the ethical teachings of the major religions are wishful thinking? This book tackles two questions that continue to be asked by people everywhere: Why did a highly civilized nation like Germany, in the middle of the twentieth century, commit the most heinous crime in all of human history? And if indeed there is a loving God who made a covenant with the people of Israel, why were millions of innocent, peaceful Jews dehumanized, starved, tortured, and systematically murdered? Explaining the Holocaust spares no one in discussing the enormity of the evil. But it also shows how the divine spark in human beings did not die during those years of darkness, and why we still have a glimmer of hope. ""Explaining the Holocaust is balanced, graceful, and probing. Including both Jewish and Christian theological responses to the Holocaust, as well as voices from around the world, Rabbi Schreiber presents an historical overview of the Holocaust and Holocaust studies. His style is personal, engaging, and conversational, yet also reveals his extensive knowledge and erudition. An excellent book for small-group discussion."" --Alice Ogden Bellis, Professor of Old Testament, Howard University School of Divinity Mordecai Schreiber is the author of several books on the Bible and on the Holocaust. His latest book is Hearing the Voice of God (2013). He is the founder of Schreiber Translations and Schreiber Publishing. Now retired from both, he devotes his time to research and writing.

Recollections of the first bat mitzvah at the only synagogue in Indonesia, a poignant bat mitzvah memory of World War II Italy, and an American bat mitzvah shared with girls in a Ukrainian orphanage—these are a few of the resonant testimonies about the transition from Jewish girl to Jewish woman collected in Today I Am a Woman. Introduced by brief biographical notes and descriptions of Jewish communities around the world, these stories reveal how Judaism defines this important rite of passage in a girl's life in widely disparate settings. The contributions are from bat mitzvah girls of the past and present, their parents, communities, and religious leaders. Including evocative family photos—some recent, some from decades past—this rich compilation is an ideal gift for bat mitzvah celebrants, their families, and friends.

"Judaism in the Roman World" deals with the religious lives of Jews in the Roman world from late Second Temple times to the Later Roman Empire. *** The studies collected here analyse a series of issues important in the development of Judaism in this period: the role of the Temple and pilgrimage in the first century CE; the attitude of Jews to the physical texts of the Torah and to the scribes who produced them; the extent of variety and change within Judaism before and after 70 CE and the nature of the evidence for particular types of Judaism; the role of synagogues and images in Jewish worship; and relations between Jews and Christians in the early centuries. *** This book should be particularly useful to students of ancient Judaism and those interested in Christian origins.

"...gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by all faiths and none." -- inside front jacket flap.

In this book, master Talmudist and scholar of the Greco-Roman world, the late Professor Saul Lieberman, elucidates words, texts, customs, and practices in either rabbinic or classical literature, often by reference to passages in the other. In “Greek in Jewish Palestine”, he demonstrates that “almost every foreign word and phrase have their raison d'etre in rabbinic literature” and that “all Greek phrases in rabbinic literature are quotations.” “Hellenism in Greek Palestine” is “an inquiry into the spirit of many rabbinic observations and investigations of the facts, incidents, opinions, notions and beliefs to which the Rabbis allude in their statements.”

Formerly one of the largest and most militant Islamic organizations in the Middle East, Egypt's al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyah is believed to have played an instrumental role in numerous acts of global terrorism, including the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In later years, however, the organization issued a surprising renunciation of violence, repudiating its former ideology and replacing it with a shari'ah -based understanding and assessment of the purpose and proper application of jihad. This key manifesto of modern Islamist thought is now available to an English-speaking audience in an eminently readable translation by noted Islamic scholar Sherman A. Jackson. Unlike other Western and Muslim critiques of violent extremism, this important work emerges from within the movement of Middle Eastern Islamic activism, both challenging and enriching prevailing notions about the role of Islamists in fighting the scourge of extremist politics, blind anti-Westernism, and, alas, wayward jihad.

"From one of the leading historians of the Jewish past comes a stunning look into a previously unexamined dimension of Jewish life and culture: the calendar. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a momentous reform of Western timekeeping, and with it a period of great instability. Jews, like all minority cultures in Europe, had to realign their time-keeping to accord with the new Christian calendar. Elisheva Carlebach shows that the calendar is a complex and living system, constantly modified as new preoccupations emerge and old priorities fade. Calendars serve to structure time and activities and thus become mirrors of experience. Through this seemingly mundane and all-but-overlooked document, we can reimagine the quotidian world of early modern Jewry, of market days and sacred days, of times to avoid Christian gatherings and times to secure communal treasures. In calendars, we see one of the central paradoxes of Jewish existence: the need to encompass the culture of the other while retaining one#x19;s own unique culture. Carlebach reveals that Jews have always lived in multiple time scales, and demonstrates how their accounting for time, as much as any cultural monument, has shaped Jewish life. After a decade exploring Judaica collections around the world, Carlebach brings to light these textually rich and beautifully designed repositories of Jewish life. With color illustrations throughout, this is an evocative illumination of how early modern Jewry marked the rhythms and realities of time and filled it with anxieties and achievements."--Jacket.

Religious faith is under assault. In books, movies, and on television, secular critics are attacking religion and the religious with ever-increasing intensity. These "new atheists" typically repeat a two-part mantra: They claim that only an idiot could believe in God, and that idiots who do so have been responsible for most of the hate and violence that have plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge, and the world will finally know peace. Surprisingly few books have emerged to defend faith from this onslaught. Yet when it comes to this second argument--the behavior of religious people in the world--abstract claims can be tested by reference to objective facts. In Defense of Faith examines the historical record and demonstrates that far from encouraging hate and aggression, the Judeo-Christian tradition has been the West's most effective curb on these dangerous defects of human nature. In Defense of Faith asserts that the belief in the sanctity and equality of all humans at the core of both Judaism and Christianity--what Brog calls the "Judeo-Christian idea"--has been our most effective tool in the struggle for humanity. The Judeo-Christian idea, Brog argues, has provided the intellectual foundation for human rights. Even more importantly, he maintains, the Judeo-Christian idea has repeatedly inspired the faithful to devote their lives to, and often risk their lives in, the fulfillment of these high ideals. In Defense of Faith also convincingly demonstrates that when we abandon religion as the critics urge, peace does not break out. Instead, we quickly revert to the most base instincts of our selfish genes. Written by a Jewish author who works closely with the Christian faith community, In Defense of Faith will appeal to secular and religious readers alike. This book will challenge the secular to reconsider the role of religion in Western civilization. It will inspire the religious to embrace a proud legacy of faith in action for the sake of humanity.

The first female Conservative rabbi in the U.S. reflects on ancient Jewish traditions as a guide to reconciliation and peacebuilding in our lives, our communities, and our world.

The papers in this book represent a unique integration of Jewish history and classics. They tackle from different angles the extent to which Jews in the Graeco-Roman period differed from other peoples in the Mediterranean region, and how much Jewish evidence can be used for the history of the wider classical world. The authors make extensive use not only of types of evidence familiar to classicists, such as inscriptions and the writings of Josephus, but also Jewish religious literature, including Rabbinic texts. The various studies demonstrate that, although Jews lived to some extent apart from others with distinctive customs, in many ways their history also highlights the cultural presuppositions and preoccupations of their non-Jewish contemporaries. The book aims to encourage wider use of the Jewish evidence by classicists and will be important for all students of the classical world.

Noted post-Holocaust philosopher Emil L. Fackenheim asks the question, "How can there be 'supernatural' incursions into 'natural' history?" In attempting to reconcile a perception of God as imminent in human affairs with the the horror of the Holocaust, this work addresses the destiny of the Jewish faith is the modern world.

This book is a history, an indictment, a lament, and an appeal, focusing on the messianic trend in Lubavitch hasidism. It demonstrates how hasidim who affirm the dead Rebbe's messiahship have abandoned one of Judaism's core beliefs in favour of adherence to the doctrine of a second coming. At the same time, it decries the remarkable equanimity with which the standard-bearers of Orthodoxy have granted legitimacy to this development by continuing to recognize such believers as Orthodox Jews in good standing. This dramatic abandonment of the age-old Jewish resistance to a quintessentially Christian belief is a development of striking importance for the history of religions, and it is an earthquake in the history of Judaism. David Berger chronicles the unfolding of this development from a personal viewpoint. He describes the growing concern that impelled him to undertake an anti-messianist campaign-publications, correspondence, and the sponsorship of a Rabbinical Council of America resolution excluding this belief from authentic Judaism. He argues that a large number, almost certainly a substantial majority, of Lubavitch hasidim believe in the Rebbe's messiahship; a significant segment, including educators in the central institutions of the movement, maintain a theology that goes beyond posthumous messianism to the affirmation that the Rebbe is pure divinity. While many Jews see Lubavitch as a marginal phenomenon, its influence is in fact growing at a remarkable rate-to the point where its representatives are poised to dominate Orthodox religious institutions not merely in isolated outposts but in several major countries throughout the world. This book analyses the boundaries of Judaism's messianic faith and its conception of God. It assesses the threat posed by the messianists of Lubavitch and points to the consequences, ranging from undermining a fundamental argument against the Christian mission to calling into question the kosher status of many foods and ritual objects prepared under Lubavitch supervision. Finally, it proposes a strategy to protect authentic Judaism from this assault.

"Hard to believe but true: - The Passover Seder is a Greco-Roman symposium banquet - The Talmud rabbis presented themselves as Stoic philosophers - Synagogue buildings were Roman basilicas - Hellenistic rhetoric professors educated sons of well-to-do Jews - Zeus-Helios is depicted in synagogue mosaics across ancient Israel - The Jewish courts were named after the Roman political institution, the Sanhedrin - In Israel there were synagogues where the prayers were recited in Greek. Historians have long debated the (re)birth of Judaism in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple cult by the Romans in 70 CE. What replaced that sacrificial cult was at once something new-indebted to the very culture of the Roman overlords-even as it also sought to preserve what little it could of the old Israelite religion. The Greco-Roman culture in which rabbinic Judaism grew in the first five centuries of the Common Era nurtured the development of Judaism as we still know and celebrate it today. Arguing that its transformation from a Jerusalem-centered cult to a world religion was made possible by the Roman Empire, Rabbi Burton Visotzky presents Judaism as a distinctly Roman religion. Full of fascinating detail from the daily life and culture of Jewish communities across the Hellenistic world, Aphrodite and the Rabbis will appeal to anyone interested in the development of Judaism, religion, history, art and architecture. "--

A Landmark Exploration of Jewish History and Cultur e First published in 1977, The Jewish Mind provides a penetrating insight into the complex collective reality of the Jewish people. Raphael Patai examines how six great historical encounters, spanning three millennia, between the Jews and other cultures led to both change and continuity in Jewish communities throughout the global diaspora. A Timeless Analysis by a Prominent Scholar Patai, a noted cultural anthropologist and historian, drew on a lifetime of research and personal experience to explore the contemporary Jewish mind in its many manifestations, including an exploration of the notion of Jews as a race, an investigation into Jewish intelligence and talents, a discussion of Jewish self-hate, and a profile of Jewish personality and character. An Insightful New Foreword by Ari L. Goldman Bestselling author and journalist Ari L. Goldman places the book in the context of recent turbulent events, especially in the Middle East, and confirms Patai’s conclusion that Judaism remains of enormous value to humankind. Goldman calls the book “a brilliant and absorbing survey of everything poured into the Jewish mind over the millennia.” The Jewish Mind is a towering work of scholarship that remains relevant to anyone trying to understand Jewish culture and society around the world today.

Originally published in Hebrew in 2021, Hillel Cohen's Enemies, a Love Story argues that to understand the ongoing conflict in Palestine/Israel we need to examine the interactions among three identity groups: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, and Arabs. Refusing to treat Jewish society as a monolith, Cohen shows how the ethnic divide between Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent) and Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) can inform and complicate how we view the wider picture of nationalism, religiosity, and oppression in this part of the world. Cohen considers how and why Ashkenazi-Arab and Mizrahi-Arab relations have metamorphosed over time, from the final decades of the Ottoman Empire into the Mandate period, from the Nakba and its aftermath to the Six Day War of 1967, and from the political upheaval of the 1970s to the rise of the right-wing Likud party and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. The author challenges widespread beliefs that "Mizrahi" is synonymous with rigid nationalism and "Ashkenazi" with progressivism and support for reconciliation, showing how religiosity and socioeconomic status have shaped Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians. Readers interested in Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East should find tremendous value in this timely book on a sensitive issue.

Sobibor traces the life of Berek (later Bernard) Schlesinger from his Polish shtetl childhood to his life during the Holocaust - hiding in the woods, finding refuge with non-Jews, confinement in Sobibor, escape during the uprising, working with partisans' documents. A physician after the war, he follows a relentless, unfulfilled pursuit of retribution for Nazi war criminals through the courts. The Sobibor uprising and its leaders, Alexander Pechersky, are pivotal to the novel. The author, Michael Lev, a product of Soviet Jewish culture, avoids loud rhetoric and heroic pathos, keeping the narration within the limits of realism. A flowing, masterful read.

This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dönme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dönme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.

Islamic antisemitism is as old as Islam itself, and is not a mere borrowing from non-Muslim sources, as has been claimed. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism provides comprehensive, meticulously documented evidence that a readily discernible, uniquely Islamic antisemitism—specific Muslim hatred of Jews—has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. Writing in 1971, S.D. Goitein, the pre-eminent scholar of Muslim-Jewish relations as revealed in the Geniza documentary record of the high Middle Ages (950-1250 C.E.), employed the term antisemitism, “…in order to differentiate animosity against Jews from the discrimination practiced by Islam against non-Muslims in general. Our scrutiny of the Geniza material has proved the existence of ‘antisemitism’ in the time and the area considered here…”. Goitein cited as concrete proof of his assertion that a unique strain of Islamic Jew hatred was extant at that time (i.e., up to a millennium ago)—exploding the common assumption of its absence—the fact that letters from the Geniza material, “…have a special word for it and, most significantly, one not found in the Bible or in Talmudic literature…but one much used and obviously coined in the Geniza period.” Important examples of antisemitic motifs in the foundational Muslim texts are presented: from the Koran and Koranic exegesis by the greatest classical and modern Muslim commentators; the hadith (words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), the sira (earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad), as well as the writings of influential Muslim jurists, theologians, and scholars, from the Middle Ages through the contemporary era. These primary sources, and seminal secondary analyses translated here for the first time into English such as Hartwig Hirschfeld’s mid 1880s essays on Muhammad’s subjugation of the Jews of Medina, and George Vajda’s elegant, comprehensive 1937 study of the hadith—detail the sacralized rationale for Islam’s anti-Jewish bigotry. Numerous complementary historical accounts illustrate the resulting the plight of Jewish communities in the Muslim world across space and time, culminating in the genocidal threat posed to the Jews of Israel today. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism debunks the conventional wisdom which continues to assert that Muslim Jew hatred is entirely a 20th century phenomenon, a loose amalgam of re-cycled medieval Christian Judeophobic motifs, calumnies from the Czarist Russia “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and standard Nazi propaganda, that only arose after the advent of the Zionist movement and the protracted Arab-Jewish conflict over all of the lands comprising the original 1922 Mandate for historical Palestine. Scholars, educators, and interested lay readers will find this collection an invaluable resource for understanding the phenomenon of Muslim antisemitism, past and present. An updated Author’s Preface for this new edition—which includes materials through January 3, 2020—elucidates the current global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism, and its resulting violent manifestations, in Israel, Western Europe, and the United States. Doctrinal drivers of this hatred, as espoused by iconic Muslim religious leaders representing the pinnacles of institutional Islamic religious education—both Sunni and Shiite—are introduced. This compendious, timely exposé rivets upon freshly translated samples of modern, seminal Koranic glosses—rife with Jew-hatred—which shape current understandings of Islam’s holy book, and Islam itself, by the Muslim masses. The new Preface concludes with a focused discussion about why non-Muslim religious leaders, especially Jews, must admonish institutional Islam to begin its own process, akin to Vatican II/Nostre Aetate, of expunging at least the most virulent Jew-hating motifs from Islam’s core theology.