In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition -- Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis -- struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture

"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. "--

PROMISE AND FULFILMENT Palestine TO ABRAM AND JASHA WEINSHALL CITIZENS OF ISRAEL AS A TOKEN OF A QUARTER-CENTURY OF FRIENDSHIP ACKNOWLEDGMENTS MY sincere thanks are due to R. H. S. Grossman, M. P., and Messrs. Hamish Hamilton, for permission to use the long extract pp. 102-7 from Grossmans Palestine Mission to a member of the Israeli Foreign Office, who wishes to remain anonymous, for per mission to print his Report from Jerusalem pp. 234-8 to Mr. George Pape, Librarian of the Public Information Office in Tel Aviv, and Dr. G. Pollack of the Israeli Ministry of Finance, for valuable research work and to Miss Daphne Wood ward, for helping with the proofs. A. K. PREFACE THIS book consists of three parts, Background, Close-up and Perspective . The first part is a survey of the develop ments which led to the foundation of the State of Israel. It lays no claim to historical completeness, and is written from a specific angle which stresses the part played by irrational forces and emotive bias in history. I am not sure whether this emphasis has not occasionally resulted in over-emphasis as is almost in evitable when one tries to redress a balance by spot-lighting aspects which are currently neglected. But it was certainly not my intention, by underlining the psychological factor, to deny or minimize the importance of the politico-economic forces. My aim was rather to present, if I may borrow a current medical term, a psycho-somatic view of one of the most curious episodes in modern history. The second part, Close-up, is meant to give the reader a close and coloured, but not I hope technicoloured, view of the Jewish war and of everyday life in the new State. It opens and ends with extracts fromthe diary of my last sojourn as a war correspondent in Israel. The emphasis here is on life in the towns, with only occasional glimpses of the collective settlements, since I have given a detailed description of these in an earlier book. The third part, Perspective, is an attempt to present to the reader a comprehensive survey of the social and political structure, the cultural trends and future prospects of the Jewish State. I have tried to show elsewhere that the creative processes of the artist and the scientist follow the same mental pattern, and that the sciences may legitimately be called neutral arts, separated from the emotive arts not by any distinct barrier but merely by the quality of our emotive reactions. In this sense vii Viii PROMISE AND FULFILMENT history, too, is a neutral art with mythology and bardic folklore as connecting links to the emotive arts of drama and fiction. But the emotive neutrality which should characterize the chronicler is not the same thing as indifference, and his object ivity can only be the result of a subjective passion for the pursuit of truth. It is a poor sort of impartiality which stands outside the parties, untouched by their emotions the good judge, like the playwright and historian, absorbs the subjective truth con tained in each of the conflicting pleas, and his verdict is a syn thesis of their part-truths, not their denial. In other words, r objectivity is a state of balanced emotions, not an emotive vacuum. This book, then, should be regarded as a subjective pursuit of the objective truth. I lived in Palestine from my twentieth to my twenty-third year, as a farmer, tramp, and on various odd jobs finally as a foreign correspondent. Ihave since revisited the country at fairly regular intervals, and each of these visits provided an occasion not only to study developments in the country, but also my personal attitude to it. The last phase of this pilgrims progress through a thicket of emotive and ideo logical entanglements is summed up in the Epilogue. It may also be read as a prologue, and serve as an indication of the point of view from which certain controversial problems are treated in this book...

Poet, philosopher, and sensitive misanthrope, a spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh-century Andalusian-Jewish elite, Solomon Ibn Gabirol comes down to us as one of the most complicated intellectual figures in the history of post-biblical Judaism. Unlike his worldly predecessor Shmuel HaNagid, the first important poet of the period, Ibn Gabirol was a reclusive, mystically inclined figure whose modern-sounding medieval poems range from sublime descriptions of the heavenly spheres to poisonous jabs at court life and its pretenders. His verse, which demonstrates complete mastery of the classicizing avant-garde poetics of the day, grafted an Arabic aesthetic onto a biblical vocabulary and Jewish setting, taking Hebrew poetry to a level of metaphysical sophistication and devotional power it has not achieved since. Peter Cole's selection includes poems from nearly all of Ibn Gabirol's secular and liturgical lyric genres, as well as a complete translation of the poet's long masterwork, "Kingdom's Crown." Cole's rich, inventive introduction places the poetry in historical context and charts its influence through the centuries. Extensive annotations accompany the poems. This companion volume to Peter Cole's critically acclaimed Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid presents the first comprehensive selection of Ibn Gabirol's verse to be published in English and brings to life an astonishing body of poetry by one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time.

Poet, philosopher, and sensitive misanthrope, a spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh-century Andalusian-Jewish elite, Solomon Ibn Gabirol comes down to us as one of the most complicated intellectual figures in the history of post-biblical Judaism. Unlike his worldly predecessor Shmuel HaNagid, the first important poet of the period, Ibn Gabirol was a reclusive, mystically inclined figure whose modern-sounding medieval poems range from sublime descriptions of the heavenly spheres to poisonous jabs at court life and its pretenders. His verse, which demonstrates complete mastery of the classicizing avant-garde poetics of the day, grafted an Arabic aesthetic onto a biblical vocabulary and Jewish setting, taking Hebrew poetry to a level of metaphysical sophistication and devotional power it has not achieved since. Peter Cole's selection includes poems from nearly all of Ibn Gabirol's secular and liturgical lyric genres, as well as a complete translation of the poet's long masterwork, "Kingdom's Crown." Cole's rich, inventive introduction places the poetry in historical context and charts its influence through the centuries. Extensive annotations accompany the poems. This companion volume to Peter Cole's critically acclaimed Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid presents the first comprehensive selection of Ibn Gabirol's verse to be published in English and brings to life an astonishing body of poetry by one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time.

Tales of Good and Evil focuses on what Hallie calls the "lucid mystery" of those who choose to help others in need, through the life stories of three people. Hallie tries to understand the ambiguous decency of Major Julius Schmahling, the German officer in charge of Chambon, who looked the other way as the villagers did their rescue work. He follows his portrait of the major with a riveting account of Joshua James, the Massachusetts man who in the early nineteenth. century founded the Life-Saving Rescue Service, later institutionalized by the Coast Guard, in which he and his crew of oarsmen regularly risked life and limb saving the passengers and sailors of ships foundering off the coast in violent storms. The final section of the book is a profile of Hallie's Connecticut neighbor, Katchen Coley, who founded The Connection, an organization devoted to rehabilitating drug- and alcohol-dependent young men and women. Tales of Good and. Evil is also the story of Hallie himself, as he tries to understand his own ambiguous moral actions, first as a child in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, fighting to protect himself and his younger brother from anti-Semitic bullies, then as a World War II artilleryman, and finally as a philosopher of ethics who realized he could be coldly objective in studying the viciousness of human beings throughout history. In this study in moral ambiguity, written with great eloquence, we see a distinguished ethicist's concern with grasping the essence of good and evil both in daily life and under extraordinary circumstances.

From the glittering salons of Venice to the grand opera houses of Vienna and the bustling streets of New York, Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte offers a fascinating journey through the life of one of history’s most intriguing figures. Best known as Mozart’s librettist for Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Così fan tutte, Da Ponte was much more than a lyricist—he was a poet, priest, adventurer, and immigrant who reinvented himself time and again. In this candid and engaging autobiography, Da Ponte recounts his tumultuous life with wit and charm. Born a Jewish convert to Catholicism, he became a priest, only to be exiled from Venice due to scandal. He found fortune and fame in Vienna under Emperor Joseph II, collaborating with Mozart to create some of the most enduring works in opera. Yet his life was marked by upheaval—falling from grace, wandering through Europe, and eventually settling in America, where he became a bookseller, teacher, and even helped establish Italian opera in the New World. A tale of artistic genius, resilience, and reinvention, Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte is a captivating firsthand account of an extraordinary life lived at the crossroads of history, music, and adventure.

"In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel's history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously - and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment. Eight "mini-revolutions," he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including: Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision; Establishing a new definition for the Jewish collective in historical Palestine; Finalizing a plan for the future of the Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since 1967; and Creating a new strategy for a united Palestinian national movement. Pappé concretely envisions a more just future - a democratic decolonized state for both Palestinians and Israelis - and how we might get there" -- publisher's description.

First published in 1955, with a revised edition appearing five years later, H. G. Adler's Theresienstadt, 1941-1945 is a foundational work in the field of Holocaust studies. As the first scholarly monograph to describe the particulars of a single camp - the Jewish ghetto in the Czech city of Terezin - it is the single most detailed and comprehensive account of any concentration camp. Adler, a survivor of the camp, divides the book into three sections: a history of the ghetto, a detailed institutional and social analysis of the camp, and an attempt to understand the psychology of the perpetrators and the victims. A collaborative effort between the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Terezin Publishing Project makes this authoritative text on Holocaust history available for the first time in the English language, with a new afterword by the author's son Jeremy Adler.

Geza Vermes's The Resurrection presents a comprehensive account of exactly what the earliest Christian sources report about the aftermath of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The story of Christ's crucifixion and subsequent resurrection is the rock of faith on which Christianity is founded. But on what evidence is the most miraculous phenomenon in religious history based? World-famous biblical scholar Geza Vermes has studied all the evidence that still remains, over two thousand years after Jesus Christ was reported to have risen from the dead. Examining the Jewish Bible, the New Testament and other accounts left to us, as well as contemporary attitudes to the afterlife, he takes us through each episode with a historian's focus: the crucifixion, the treatment of the body, the statements of the women who found the empty tomb, and the visions of Christ by his disciples. Unravelling the true meaning conveyed in the Gospels, the Acts and St Paul, Vermes shines a new light on the developing faith in the risen Christ among the first followers of Jesus. 'The greatest Jesus scholar of his generation' Sunday Telegraph Geza Vermes is director of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His books, published by Penguin, include The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English , The Story of the Scrolls and The Changing Faces of Jesus as well as the 'Jesus' trilogy: Nativity , Passion and Resurrection .

"In Fireweed, Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women's history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a novelist's skill and a historian's command of context. Lerner's memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. The child of a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was still a teenager when a fascist regime came to power in 1934, and she became involved in the underground resistance movement. The Nazi takeover of Austria cast her into prison, then forced her and her family into exile; she alone was able to leave Europe. Once in the United States, she experienced the harshness of the Depression and despair over the fate of her family. Still, she persisted in adapting to the new culture and to becoming a writer. Here she met and married her life-long partner, Carl Lerner, a film editor and director. Together they become deeply involved in left-wing activities, from struggling to unionize the film industry and resisting the blacklist in Hollywood to community organizing for peace, for an interracial civil rights movement, and for better schools in New York City. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women's history." -- Publisher's description.

A new play from Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek that deals with the 2015 terror attack on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo 's offices in Paris. In Greek mythology, it is Hera who blinds the hero Heracles, so that, in a fit of fury, he kills his own family. In the twenty-first century, the gods have another name. So did the three young men who stormed a magazine's editorial office and a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015 and murdered twelve people. The blind fury, however, remained and more virulent than ever, not least because the weapons were so much more effective. In this raging text, arguably one of her darkest, Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek investigates topical political events in the context of enduring history and myths. Fury expresses itself not only multi-voiced and from the changing perspective of Islamist terrorists (and their special hatred of Jews), in the shape of furious German citizens, individual narcissistic humiliation, or brutal distribution battles around the globe. Rather, fury also appears as the motor that has driven people with a devastating force for centuries. With her characteristic linguistic power, Jelinek articulates her own disconcertedness in the face of these crimes. In passing, she returns repeatedly to the contradiction between religious laws against representation and the deluge of images online, where movies of assassination, severed heads, and other atrocities are exhibited for millions to see. Fury is a compact grand epic that starts in primal times and attempts to describe the indescribable, relating the inexplicable in our times.

Hailed for its searing emotional insights, and for the astonishing originality with which it weaves together personal history, cultural essay, and readings of classical texts by Sophocles, Ovid, Euripides, and Sappho, The Elusive Embrace is a profound exploration of the mysteries of identity. It is also a meditation in which the author uses his own divided life to investigate the "rich conflictedness of things," the double lives all of us lead. Daniel Mendelsohn recalls the deceptively quiet suburb where he grew up, torn between his mathematician father's pursuit of scientific truth and the exquisite lies spun by his Orthodox Jewish grandfather; the streets of manhattan's newest "gay ghetto," where "desire for love" competes with "love of desire;" and the quiet moonlit house where a close friend's small son teaches him the meaning of fatherhood. And, finally, in a neglected Jewish cemetery, the author uncovers a family secret that reveals the universal need for storytelling, for inventing myths of the self. The book that Hilton Als calls "equal to Whitman's 'Song of Myself,'" The Elusive Embrace marks a dazzling literary debut.

There is no single history of the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli historical narrative speaks of Zionism as the Jewish national movement, of building a refuge from persecution, and of national regeneration. The Palestinian narrative speaks of invasion, expulsion, and oppression. Its no wonder peace remains elusive. This volume attempts to present both histories with parallel narratives of key points in the 19th and 20th centuries to 1948. The histories are presented by fourteen Israeli and Palestinian experts, joined by other historians, journalists, and activists, who then discuss the differences and similarities between their accounts. By creating an appreciation, understanding, and respect for the “other,” the first steps can be made to foster a shared history of a shared land. The reader has the opportunity to witness first hand a respectful confrontation between the competing versions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The second installment in the Ariel's Bible Commentary Series. In his action packed, culturally relevant exegesis of the Book of Judges, Dr. Fruchtenbaum opens a portal where formerly unfamiliar names and places come alive with meaning. Armies clash, heroes rise, and human affection for other gods multiplies with soul-numbing impact. We see in his exegesis of the Book of Ruth a contrasting, in-depth picture of life among the true believers living in Bethlehem during this ancient time. These two history books are set in the time when Israel was in the Land but not yet a unified nation. Although God continues to hear the cry of the children of Israel each time they fall away and face turmoil, they fall ever further into spiritual blindness because of their disobedience. Eventually, even the spiritual leaders become immune to their own glaring indifference to God s Word. In all, God sent twelve Judges to save the children of Israel. Seven of these Judges are treated in detail as Israel goes through each cycle of apostasy, oppression, repentance, and salvation by a Judge. The Book of Ruth, an appendix to the Book of Judges, presents enormously touching portraits of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. They are pictured as part of the faithful community of Messianic Jewish believers of their own time, worthy ancestors of King David and the promised King Messiah yet to be revealed.

The first full-scale account of Joseph Stalin's personal vendetta against Soviet Jews. Drawing on newly opened archives and on his own experiences in the USSR of the early 1950s, the investigative journalist-lawyer Arkady Vaksberg reveals the genesis and evolution of the Communist leader's malevolent campaign - and the extraordinary cunning and shrewdness of his tactics. He shows us Stalin prosecuting prominent Jews in the notorious trials of the 1930s while appointing Jews as commanders of eleven out of twelve Gulags. We see the "Man of Steel" awarding the Order of Lenin to a celebrated Jew every time he launches a new anti-Semitic assault - and choosing a Jew, the infinitely hypocritical and sadistic Lazar Kaganovich, as his protege and chief hatchet-man. All this, while thousands of innocent Jewish men and women across the Soviet Union are being stripped of their jobs and property . . . arbitrarily arrested . . . summarily shot. Vaksberg also tells of the trumped-up trial of Soviet Jewish diplomats that was ultimately abandoned after Hitler's invasion; the curious life, and death, of the Jewish Antifascist Committee; the state-ordered murder of the great actor-director Solomon Mikhoels; the plan to deport the entire Soviet Jewish population to Siberia; how Ilya Ehrenburg finally abandoned his role as a "house Jew" and dared to criticize Stalin's policies; and the infamous "Doctor's Plot" just before the dictator's death. A fascinating, richly documented, and profoundly shocking work of twentieth-century history.

Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history's closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first was incandescent with apocalyptic hopes, expecting God through his messiah to fulfill his ancient promises of redemption to Israel. The second teemed with ancient actors, not only human but also divine: angry superhuman forces, jealous demons, and hostile cosmic gods. Both worlds are Paul's, and his convictions about the first shaped his actions in the second. Only by situating Paul within this charged social context of gods and humans, pagans and Jews, cities, synagogues, and competing Christ-following assemblies can we begin to understand his mission and message. This original and provocative book offers a dramatically new perspective on one of history's seminal figures.

2012 National Jewish Book Award Winner JEWISH JOCKS: AN UNORTHODOX HALL OF FAME is a timeless collection of biographical musings, sociological riffs about assimilation, first-person reflections, and, above all, great writing on some of the most influential and unexpected pioneers in the world of sports. Featuring work by today's preeminent writers, these essays explore significant Jewish athletes, coaches, broadcasters, trainers, and even team owners (in the finite universe of Jewish Jocks, they count!). Contributors include some of today's most celebrated writers covering a vast assortment of topics, including David Remnick on the biggest mouth in sports, Howard Cosell; Jonathan Safran Foer on the prodigious and pugnacious Bobby Fischer; Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson writing elegantly on Marty Reisman, America's greatest ping-pong player and the sport's ultimate showman. Deborah Lipstadt examines the continuing legacy of the Munich Massacre, the fortieth anniversary of which coincided with the 2012 London Olympics. Jane Leavy reveals why Sandy Koufax agreed to attend her daughter's bat mitzvah. And we learn how Don Lerman single-handedly thrust competitive eating into the public eye with three pounds of butter and 120 jalapeño peppers. These essays are supplemented by a cover design and illustrations throughout by Mark Ulriksen. From settlement houses to stadiums and everywhere in between, JEWISH JOCKS features men and women who do not always fit the standard athletic mold. Rather, they utilized talents long prized by a people of the book (and a people of commerce) to game these games to their advantage, in turn forcing the rest of the world to either copy their methods-or be left in their dust.

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.

"This beautiful work of historical fiction was inspired by the diary of an actual 18th-century Roman Jewish girl, imprisoned by the Catholic Church because someone with a grudge offered her to the Church. Anything But Yes is the true story of a young woman's struggle to defend her identity in the face of relentless attempts to destroy it. In 1749, 18-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in Rome's Jewish ghetto and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Convertiti, the house of converts. With no access to the outside world, she withstood isolation, sleep deprivation, endless lectures, and threats and promises. If Anna were to utter the simple word "yes," she would risk forced baptism, which meant never returning to her home and losing contact with any Jew-including her own family-for the rest of her life. Even in Italy today, few people know the full story of Rome's Jewish ghetto, the abduction of Jews, or the popes who were intent on forcibly converting every non-Catholic living in the long shadow of the Vatican. Young girls and small children were the primary targets of these forced conversions, for they were most vulnerable. But Anna del Monte was different. She was strong, brilliant, and educated, and wrote a diary of her experiences. Her diary became lost for more than 200 years but was rediscovered in Israel in 1989. Anything But Yes is based on Anna's diary and Joie Davidow's extensive research on life in the 18th-century Roman Jewish ghetto and its personalities, traditions, foods, and dialect"--