Download or read book ParshaNut written by David Kadish and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of Nechama Leibowitz’s classic, "New Studies in the Weekly Parsha," Rabbi David Kasher offers 54 essays exploring the vast but understudied genre of Jewish literature known as parshanut, or Torah commentary. From the masters of midrash who began the tradition, to the medieval commentators who defined the style, on down to the scholars of the modern age, Kasher leads an impassioned and engaging tour through the history of Jewish Biblical interpretation. “With engaging clarity and vivacity, Kasher presents a wide range of traditional commentaries on the biblical text. In each chapter, he poses a central question which then becomes a field for vigorous discussion, pursued in a contemporary conversational tone. Kasher arrives at sometimes provocative resolutions and the reader is drawn into the work of parshanut, of biblical interpretation, which is clearly a passion for him, and irresistibly becomes a passion for the reader too.” – Dr. Avivah Gottleib Zornberg, Author of "Genesis: The Beginning of Desire" “Rabbi David Kasher has written a magnificent commentary on the Torah. With echoes of Nechama Leibowitz, the work beautifully synthesizes traditional commentaries with creative insights. Intellectually deep and yet accessible to all. A masterful book.” – Rabbi Avi Weiss, Founder of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah & Yeshivat Maharat “To read this book is to get a front row seat in the classroom of a master teacher. Rabbi Kasher’s voice is as accessible as his insights are profound. From the most learned reader to the true beginner, Rabbi Kasher leaves us enriched and wiser, granting us access to our own sacred inheritance.” – Rabbi Sharon Brous, Founder and Senior Rabbi, IKAR “If a student approached me and said: “I will read one book, but only one book, on the Torah. If I fall in love, I’ll stay. If it falls flat for me, I’m out” – this is the book I would tell them to read.” – Rabbi Benay Lappe, President and Rosh Yeshiva, SVARA

Download or read book Masters of the Word written by Yonatan Kolatch and published by KTAV Publishing House, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Visions of Jewish Education written by Seymour Fox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-07 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the philosophical consideration of Jewish existence in our time, as reflected in Jewish education, its alternative visions, its purposes and instrumentalities, the values it should serve, and the personal and social character it ought to foster. Prevalent conceptions and practices of Jewish education are neither sufficiently reflective nor thoroughgoing enough to meet the multiple challenges that the world now poses to Jewish existence and continuity. New efforts are needed to develop an education of the future that will honor the riches of the Jewish past and grasp the opportunities of fruitful interactions with the general culture of the present. To promote such efforts, six leading scholars in this book formulate their variant visions of an ideal Jewish education for the contemporary world. This book also translates these visions into educational practice and, finally, articulates a vision abstracted from a case study of a school's ongoing practice.

Download or read book These are the Words written by Arthur Green and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judaism itself is a language, a group's way of expressing beliefs, longings, aspirations and dreams. The vocabulary of Jewish life is the framework that Jews use to hand their past down to their children. It is, also, the vocabulary that people of other faiths need to know to understand Judaism and Jewish life. In this revised edition of the ultimate Jewish primer, one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time takes readers on a historical and spiritual journey through Judaism.

Download or read book Jewish Concepts of Scripture written by Benjamin D. Sommer and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do Jews think scripture is? How do the People of the Book conceive of the Book of Books? In what ways is it authoritative? Who has the right to interpret it? Is it divinely or humanly written? And have Jews always thought about the Bible in the same way? In seventeen cohesive and rigorously researched essays, this volume traces the way some of the most important Jewish thinkers throughout history have addressed these questions from the rabbinic era through the medieval Islamic world to modern Jewish scholarship. They address why different Jewish thinkers, writers, and communities have turned to the Bible—and what they expect to get from it. Ultimately, argues editor Benjamin D. Sommer, in understanding the ways Jews construct scripture, we begin to understand the ways Jews construct themselves.

Download or read book The Zohar written by Daniel Chanan Matt and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third volume of completes the Zohar's commentary on the book of Genesis. Throughout, the Zohar probes the biblical text and seeks deeper meaning--for example, the divine intention behind Joseph's disappearance, or the profound significance of human sexuality.

Download or read book The Challenge of Received Tradition written by Naomi Grunhaus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the consistent ways Radak (R. David Kimhi, c. 1160-1232) juxtaposes plain, contextual exegesis (peshat) within his biblical commentaries alongside ancient modes of rabbinic interpretation (derash). In addition, the book explores his criteria for challenging rabbinic teachings, both in narrative and legal contexts.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies written by Martin Goodman and published by Oxford Handbooks Online. This book was released on 2002 with total page 1060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies reflects the current state of scholarship in the field as analyzed by an international team of experts in the different and varied areas represented within contemporary Jewish Studies. Unlike recent attempts to encapsulate the current state of Jewish Studies, the Oxford Handbook is more than a mere compendium of agreed facts; rather, it is an exhaustive survey of current interests and directions in the field.

Download or read book Conservative Judaism written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Seekers of the Face written by Melila Hellner-Eshed and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial, modern reading of the deepest mysteries in the Kabbalistic tradition. Seekers of the Face opens the profound treasure house at the heart of Judaism's most important mystical work: the Idra Rabba (Great Gathering) of the Zohar. This is the story of the Great Assembly of mystics called to order by the master teacher and hero of the Zohar, Rabbi Shim'on bar Yochai, to align the divine faces and to heal Jewish religion. The Idra Rabba demands a radical expansion of the religious worldview, as it reveals God's faces and bodies in daring, anthropomorphic language. For the first time, Melila Hellner-Eshed makes this challenging, esoteric masterpiece meaningful for everyday readers. Hellner-Eshed expertly unpacks the Idra Rabba's rich grounding in tradition, its probing of hidden layers of consciousness and the psyche, and its striking, sacred images of the divine face. Leading readers of the Zohar on a transformative adventure in mystical experience, Seekers of the Face allows us to hear anew the Idra Rabba's bold call to heal and align the living faces of God.

Download or read book Rashi s Commentary on the Torah written by Eric Lawee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Jewish Book Council Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship This book explores the reception history of the most important Jewish Bible commentary ever composed, the Commentary on the Torah of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105). Though the Commentary has benefited from enormous scholarly attention, analysis of diverse reactions to it has been surprisingly scant. Viewing its path to preeminence through a diverse array of religious, intellectual, literary, and sociocultural lenses, Eric Lawee focuses on processes of the Commentary's canonization and on a hitherto unexamined--and wholly unexpected--feature of its reception: critical, and at times astonishingly harsh, resistance to it. Lawee shows how and why, despite such resistance, Rashi's interpretation of the Torah became an exegetical classic, a staple in the curriculum, a source of shared religious vocabulary for Jews across time and place, and a foundational text that shaped the Jewish nation's collective identity. The book takes as its larger integrating perspective processes of canonicity as they shape how traditions flourish, disintegrate, or evolve. Rashi's scriptural magnum opus, the foremost work of Franco-German (Ashkenazic) biblical scholarship, faced stiff competition for canonical supremacy in the form of rationalist reconfigurations of Judaism as they developed in Mediterranean seats of learning. It nevertheless emerged triumphant in an intense battle for Judaism's future that unfolded in late medieval and early modern times. Investigation of the reception of the Commentary throws light on issues in Jewish scholarship and spirituality that continue to stir reflection, and even passionate debate, in the Jewish world today.

Download or read book Agnon s Tales of the Land of Israel written by Jeffrey Saks and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-08-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile,” S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. “But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.” Agnon’s act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon’s Hebrew writing. Depending on which side of the lens one views Eretz Yisrael through, the vision of what can be achieved there appears clearer or more distorted. These themes wove themselves into the presentations at an international conference convened in 2016 by the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies in New York City, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Agnon’s Nobel Prize. The essays from that conference, collected here, explore Zionism’s aspirations and shortcomings and the yearning for the Land from afar from S. Y. Agnon’s Galician hometown, which served as a symbol of Jewish longing worldwide. Contributing authors: Shulamith Z. Berger, Shalom Carmy, Zafrira Cohen Lidovsky, Steven Gine, Hillel Halkin, Avraham Holtz, Alan Mintz, Jeffrey Saks, Moshe Simkovich, Laura Wiseman, and Wendy Zierler

Download or read book Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference written by Ryan Szpiech and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews, Christians, and Muslims all have a common belief in the sanctity of a core holy scripture, and commentary on scripture (exegesis) was at the heart of all three traditions in the Middle Ages. At the same time, because it dealt with issues such as the nature of the canon, the limits of acceptable interpretation, and the meaning of salvation history from the perspective of faith, exegesis was elaborated in the Middle Ages along the faultlines of interconfessional disputation and polemical conflict. This collection of thirteen essays by world-renowned scholars of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam explores the nature of exegesis during the High and especially the Late Middle Ages as a discourse of cross-cultural and interreligious conflict, paying particular attention to the commentaries of scholars in the western and southern Mediterranean from Iberia and Italy to Morocco and Egypt. Unlike other comparative studies of religion, this collection is not a chronological history or an encyclopedic guide. Instead, it presents essays in four conceptual clusters (“Writing on the Borders of Islam,” “Jewish-Christian Conflict,” “The Intellectual Activity of the Dominican Order,” and “Gender”) that explore medieval exegesis as a vehicle for the expression of communal or religious identity, one that reflects shared or competing notions of sacred history and sacred text. This timely book will appeal to scholars and lay readers alike and will be essential reading for students of comparative religion, historians charting the history of religious conflict in the medieval Mediterranean, and all those interested in the intersection of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs and practices.

Download or read book Israeli Historical Revisionism written by Derek J. Penslar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume, by leading scholars from within and outside Israel, shed new light on the Israeli historians' controversy of the creation of the State of Israel, the 1948 War and its aftermath, Israel's attitude towards Holocaust survivors, the "melting pot" absorption policy and similar subjects. The attack on Zionist historiography, which initially came from what is dubbed the "post-Zionist" radical left, has recently broadened to include a critique from the right. These essays cover diverse aspects of the critique, exploring its historiographical, political, sociological and educational ramifications.

Download or read book The Bible and Jews in Medieval Spain written by Norman Roth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bible and Jews in Medieval Spain examines the grammatical, exegetical, philosophical and mystical interpretations of the Bible that took place in Spain during the medieval period. The Bible was the foundation of Jewish culture in medieval Spain. Following the scientific analysis of Hebrew grammar which emerged in al-Andalus in the ninth and tenth centuries, biblical exegesis broke free of homiletic interpretation and explored the text on grammatical and contextual terms. While some of the earliest commentary was in Arabic, scholars began using Hebrew more regularly during this period. The first complete biblical commentaries in Hebrew were written by Abraham Ibn ‘Ezra, and this set the standard for the generations that followed. This book analyses the approach and unique contributions of these commentaries, moving on to those of later Christian Spain, including the Qimhi family, Nahmanides and his followers and the esoteric-mystical tradition. Major topics in the commentaries are compared and contrasted. Thus, a unified picture of the whole fabric of Hebrew commentary in medieval Spain emerges. In addition, the book describes the many Spanish Jewish biblical manuscripts that have remained and details the history of printed editions and Spanish translations (for Jews and Christians) by medieval Spanish Jews. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Spain, as well as those interested in the history of religion and cultural history.

Download or read book Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah written by Shalom Carmy and published by Jason Aronson, Incorporated. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Preface: "The principal thrust of this book is to challenge the compartmentalization to which we seem all too easily resigned, to discover whether, and to what extent, the methods of modern scholarship can become part and parcel of the study of Torah, conceived as a religious-intellectual way of life. Not 'Modern Scholarship and the Study of Torah,' but 'Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah."

Download or read book Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity written by Isaac Kalimi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-12-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises fifteen essays classified in three major sections. Some of these essays raise theoretical and methodological issues while others focus on specific topics. The time span ranges from late biblical period to the present. The volume reflects the current thought of some of the major scholars in the field in various shapes and contexts as well as from a variety of perspectives: inner-biblical, qumranic, New Testament, various rabbinic literature (targumic, midrashic, halachic, and Medieval kabalistic), and some modern interpretation. The essays reflects the contemporary thought of some of the foremost scholars in the field of biblical exegesis from a variety of standpoints, move the biblical exegesis well beyond its conventional limits, and enrich the knowledge and deeper the understanding of the readers.