This series, an outstanding example of the traditional approach to the halakhah, deals with the application of Jewish law to contemporary social, political, technological and religious problems. Chapters in these volumes are devoted to questions of personal and social status, the State of Israel, the Sabbath and Holy Days, medical halakhah, education and business law. Major issues such as assisted procreation, abortion, fetal tissue research, the agunah problem, intermarriage, conversion, the role of the Bet Din, capital punishment, preemptive warfare and many, many more are analyzed in detail. Many of these topics have been matters of heated controversy within the Jewish community. The author, a distinguished talmudic scholar and halakhist, has culled relevant material from the vast responsa literature. He examines each question by carefully delineating the issues, showing the various positions taken by rabbinic scholars, clarifying areas of divergence and analyzing the reasons for disagreement. This work is an invaluable source book for all students of traditional Jewish law and practice. This best-selling series has been universally acclaimed as a classic of its genre. A Jerusalem Post reviewer observed that it is scholarly, lucid and good-tempered.....Direct, comprehensive, realistic.....enjoy this treasury of halakhic knowledge.

America's foremost scholar on formative Judaism examines the issue of gender as it appears in the corpus of rabbinic literature and arrives at some provocative conclusions. While the structure of Judaism based on the dual Torah is clearly masculine in orientation, the substructure--the religious system that shapes its values and perception--is androgynous, an individual conjunction of genders. In fact, the higher values, as defined by the relevant writings, prove to be feminine.

Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology at Bard College and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard. He has published more than 900 books and unnumbered articles, both scholarly and academic and popular and journalistic, and is the most published humanities scholar in the world. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees, including seven US and European honorary doctorates. He received his AB from Harvard College in 1953, his PhD from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in 1961, and rabbinical ordination and the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1960. Neusner is editor of the 'Encyclopedia of Judaism' (Brill, 1999. I-III) and its Supplements; Chair of the Editorial Board of 'The Review of Rabbinic Judaism, ' and Editor in Chief of 'The Brill Reference Library of Judaism', both published by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. He is editor of 'Studies in Judaism', University Press of America. Neusner resides with his wife in Rhinebeck, New York. They have a daughter, three sons and three daughters-in-law, six granddaughters and two grandsons.

'The Zohar' was compiled and composed in Spain in the thirteenth century, and exerted a powerful influence on Jewish life in medieval ghettoes. In this book, first published in 1932, Dr Bension was the first scholar to deal with the influence on Jewish mysticism of certain characteristics which underlie so much of the literature produced in Spain both by Christians and Muslims.