When, if ever, should lying be permitted? If you've damaged a person's reputation unfairly, can the damage be undone? Is a person who sells weapons responsible for how those weapons are used? if the fetus is not a life, what is it? How, as an adult, can one carry out the command to honor one's parents when they make unreasonable demands? What are the nine biblical challenges a good person must meet? What do the great Jewish writings of the last 3,500 years tell us about these and all other vital questions about our lives? Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has devoted his life to the search for answers within the teachings of Judaism. In Jewish Wisdom, Rabbi Telushkin, the author of the highly acclaimed Jewish Literacy, weaves together a tapestry of stories from the Bible and Talmud, and the insights of Jewish commentators and writers from Maimonides, Rashi, and Hillel to Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Elie Wiesel. A richer source of crucial life lessons would be hard to imagine. Accompanying this extraordinary compilation is Teluslikins compelling commentary, which reveals how these texts continue to instruct and challenge Jewsand all people concerned with leading ethical livestoday As he discusses these texts, Rabbi Telushkin addresses issues of fundamental interest to modern readers: how to live with honesty and integrity in an often dishonest world; how to care for the sick and dying; how to teach children to respect both themselves and others, how to understand and confront such great tragedies as antisemitism. and the Holocaust; what God wants from humankind. Within Jewish Wisdom's ninety chapters the reader will find extended sections illuminating Jewish perspectives on sex, romance, and marriage, what kind of belief in God a Jew can have after the Holocaust, how to use language ethically, the conflicting views of the Bible and Talmud on the death penalty, and much, much more. Jewish Wisdom adds a new dimension to the many widely read contemporary books that retell the stones and reveal the essence of classic religious and secular literature. Possibly the most far-ranging volume of stories and quotations from Jewish texts, Jewish Wisdom will itself become a classic, a book that not only has the capacity to transform how you view the world, but one that well might change how you choose to live your life.

Recounts the mitzvahs, or good deeds, of a dozen men and women and suggests ways young people can help others.

This anthology sets forth, in three volumes, a selection of Talmudic discussions of problems of enduring social importance. Utilizing the categories that uniformly serve in the description, analysis, and interpretation of a religion that sets forth a theory of the social order, in this case, a Judaism, we ask about how the Talmud of Babylonia discusses topics concerning Torah, God, and Israel. Those categories in their native and classical setting speak of ø1! God's ø2! revealing the Torah ø3! to Israel the holy people. These categories may be represented by the secular words ø1! ethos, ø2! ethics, and ø3! ethnos. They correspond, in a religious system, to the world view, way of life, and social entity. In each case, there is an introduction to a discussion, which specifies how the ancient sages address an issue of acute contemporary consequence. The way in which the Talmud presents its authors' ideas on issues that concern humanity in the twenty-first century is laid out in the Talmud's own language and idiom.

This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book Sefer ha-Pardes [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini. It is purportedly an example of musar: a compilation of wise epigrams and meshalim [parables] that teach moral lessons on different topics, such as the service of God, friendship, the deceitfulness of the world, medicine, logic, music, magic, and poetry. However, it is in reality a compendium of sayings that reveal the author's personal views and feelings on a variety of religious topics, secular sciences, and their practitioners. David Torollo presents a fluent and illuminating English-Hebrew parallel text based on four sixteenth-century witnesses: three manuscripts and a printed edition. A rigorous study accompanies and contextualises the Hebrew work, exploring Sefer ha-Pardes's transmission and reception in different places over time; its structure and content; its place in the intellectual environment and literary tradition of Provence; and possible lines of enquiry for future research. This essential new work offers a significant contribution to scholarship in the field of Medieval Hebrew Hispano-Provencal literature.