"Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, Jews were faced with a world in existential chaos--both they and their God were rendered homeless. So the rabbis, aspirants for leadership of the post-destruction Jewish community, appropriated inherited traditions and used them as building blocks for a new religious structure. Not unexpectedly, given the circumstances, this new rabbinic formation devoted considerable attention to matters of space and place. Rabbinic Judaism: Space and Place offers the first comprehensive study of spatiality in Rabbinic Judaism of late antiquity, exploring how the rabbis reoriented the Jewish relationship with space and place following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Drawing upon the insights of theorists such as Tuan and LeFebvre, who define the crisis that "homelessness" represents and argue for the deep relationship of human societies to their places, the book examines the compositions of the rabbis and discovers both a surprisingly aggressive rabbinic spatial imagination as well as places, most notably the synagogue, where rabbinic attention to space and place is suppressed or absent. It concludes that these represent two different but simultaneous rabbinic strategies for re-placing God and Israel--strategies that at the same time allow God and Israel to find a place anywhere. This study offers new insight into the centrality of space and place to rabbinic religion after the destruction of the Temple, and as such would be a key resource to students and scholars interested in rabbinic and ancient Judaism, as well as providing a major new case study for anthropologists interested in the study of space"--

"From the pen of a celebrated rabbi, rosh yeshivah, lecturer, and renowned historian flows a refreshingly honest look at the persona, challenges, and rewards of a congregational rabbi. This behind-the-scenes look into the rabbinate is an enlightening read for everyone, and a 'must-have' resource for anyone interested in synagogue or communal leadership"--Cover.

Why do people follow a leader, particularly a religious leader? And why, given that Americans are still an overwhelmingly religious people, is the clergy declining in influence? Byron Sherwin argues that what is missing is the perception that religious leaders today are capable of working wonders. Sherwin leads the reader through five periods of Jewish history: the era of biblical prophets, Jesus and first-century Israel; Babylonian rabbis of the third and fourth centuries; the east European Hasidic Masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and twentieth century North African rabbis. In all cases, the moral authority of the leaders came primarily from popular belief in their power to work wonders for the people. Sherwin applies history to the current situation. If the clergy is to be re-empowered, to reclaim leadership and authority as holy people, they must reassert the ability to work wonders. This is a book that every member of the clergy and every religious leader should read, ponder and take to heart.