Arguably, no historical thinker has had as varied and fractious a reception within modern Judaism as Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632–77), the seventeenth-century philosopher, pioneering biblical criti
Focusing on the figures of Plato, Archimedes, and Caravaggio, The Divine Spark of Syracuse discloses the role that Syracuse, a Greek cultural outpost in Sicily, played in fueling creative energies. Am
The Strashun Library was among the most important Jewish public institutions in Vilna, and indeed in Eastern Europe, prior to its destruction during World War II. Mattityahu Strashun, descended from a
Reading some of the best-known Torah stories through the lens of transgender experience, Joy Ladin explores fundamental questions about how religious texts, traditions, and the understanding of God ca
Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power–inspired ethnic na
Keith Thomas’s earlier studies in the ethnography of early modern England, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Man and the Natural World, and The Ends of Life, were all attempts to explore beliefs, val
In the annals of American Jewish history, synagogue financial records have been largely overlooked. But as Daniel Judson shows in his examination of synagogue ledgers from 1728 to the present, these r
“Modern Jewish thought” is often defined as a German affair, with interventions from Eastern European, American, and Israeli philosophers. The story of France’s development of its own schools of thoug
German-born Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem (1897–1982), the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, delved into the historical analysis of kabbalistic literature from late antiquity to the twentieth centur
Contemporary arguments about Jewish law uniquely reflect both the story of Jewish modernity and a crucial premise of modern conceptions of law generally: the claim of autonomy for the intellectual sub
Recently, new methods of dispute resolution in matters of family law—such as arbitration, mediation, and conciliation—have created new forms of legal culture that affect minority communities throughou
The pronouncements of Sabbatai Tsevi (1626–76) gave rise to Sabbatianism, a key messianic movement in Judaism that spread across Jewish communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The movement, whi
Focusing on Oriental Jews and their relations with their Arab neighbors in Mandatory Palestine, this book analyzes the meaning of the hybrid Arab-Jewish identity that existed among Oriental Jews, and
"Examines all four streams of Yiddish secular schools in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, through the lens of their magazines for children, including text, illustrations,
Striking in its appeal to the senses, the Song of Songs--the Bible's only book of love poems--is remarkable for its lack of sexual stereotyping and its expression of mutuality in relationships betwee
The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 plunged the world into its second global conflict. The Third Reich's attack, mounted without consulting its Italian ally, had other reverberations as well. Chief am
