Defining Judaism: A Reader

Defining Judaism illustrates the range of theoretical and practical issues involved in defining Judaism for the purposes of comparative and historical studies. The book is divided into three overlapping sections that all deal, in various ways, with the configuration of "Judaism" and how this configuration relates to other historical and/or disciplinary contexts. Texts range from historical attempts to define individual "Jews" to imagining Judaism as a religion like other religions to modern and post-modern attempts to decenter these earlier definitions. The texts anthologized here are put into context by a comprehensive general introduction. Although all of the texts collected here are interested in defining Judaism, the theories underpinning their definitions are relevant to anyone interested in the academic study of religion.

Edited by Aaron W. Hughes
Aaron W. Hughes is the Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professor of Jewish Studies and the Associate Director of the Institute of Jewish Thought and Heritage at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the author of The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (2004), Jewish Philosophy A-Z (2005), Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (Equinox Publishing, 2008), The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (2008), and, together with Elliot R. Wolfson, New Directions in Jewish Philosophy (2010).