Offered here for the first time in English translation, Hasidism as Mysticism is a classic in its field. Using the tools of phenomenology, Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer places Hasidism squarely in the context of religious studies. Hasidism s theoretical texts have been largely ignored by historians of the movement, but Shatz Uffenheimer analyzes these materials fully, disclosing the mystical, quietistic tendencies that existed alongside Hasidism s more activist popular elements. The author carefully reviewed this translation of her work: it includes a revised introduction with new material, two new chapters, and an appendix containing a translation, history and literary analysis of one of the few extant texts attributed to the Ba al Shem Tov.

Product Description: Paperback Book

Offers a provocative look at the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, arguing that the inter-religous polemic between the two religions served as a substantial component in the formation of each and that the impact of Christianity on Talmudic and medieval Judaism was much stronger than previously assumed.

This volume, an amazing act of historical recovery and reconstruction, offers a comprehensive examination of Jewish women in Europe during the High Middle Ages (1000–1300). Avraham Grossman covers multiple aspects of women’s lives in medieval Jewish society, including the image of woman, the structure of the family unit, age at marriage, position in family and society, her place in economic and religious life, her education, her role in family ceremonies, violence against women, and the position of the divorcée and the widow in society. Grossman shows that the High Middle Ages saw a distinct improvement in the status of Jewish women in Europe relative to their status during the Talmudic period and in Muslim countries. If, during the twelfth century, rabbis applauded women as "pious and pure" because of their major role in the martyrdom of the Crusades of 1096, then by the end of the thirteenth century, rabbis complained that women were becoming bold and rebellious. Two main factors fostered this change: first, the transformation of Jewish society from agrarian to "bourgeois," with women performing an increasingly important function in the family economy; and second, the openness toward women in Christian Europe, where women were not subjected to strict limitations based upon conceptions of modesty, as was the case in Muslim countries. The heart of Grossman’s book concerns the improvement of Jewish women’s lot, and the efforts of secular and religious authorities to impede their new-found status.Bringing together a variety of sources including halakhic literature, biblical and talmudic exegesis, ethical literature and philosophy, love songs, folklore and popular literature, gravestones, and drawings, Grossman’s book reconstructs the hitherto unrecorded lives of Jewish women during the Middle Ages. Hardcover is un-jacketed.

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Product Description: In current usage polemics is broadly defined as the practice of rhetorical persuasion or as the rhetorical presentation of an argument in dispute. The phenomenon of polemics is found throughout the whole corpus of biblical literature...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In this collection of essays, we encounter a scholar passionately concerned with the cultural and spiritual renaissance of the Jewish people in its own land, a scholar whose concerns encompass issues of the cultural life, language, the meaning of scholarship, and the religious quest...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry" represents the first attempt to undertake a systematic, comprehensive study of the liturgical and poetic texts which were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran. The collections of prayers, blessings and hymns indicate that fixed prayers were already customary within Judaism during the period of the Second Temple within sectarian circles...read more

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Product Description: In his years as a Rabbi, an academic and a college chaplain, Rabbi Frimer has represented the thoughtful side of Orthodoxy in its encounter both with the modern world and timeless problems. Though published at various times and in different venues, the articles collected here all manifest his profound sensitivity to the human side of religious teachings...read more