Studia Judaica

Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (PRE) is most famous for introducing into rabbinic tradition several legends about biblical figures not found in the classical rabbinic corpus of Talmud and Midrash. Modern scholarship considers the non-rabbinic legends in PRE an example of the survival of Second Temple literature within Jewish tradition. The present study, however, will attempt to explain the non-rabbinic material found in PRE as the result of the author’s adoption (and adaptation) of elements from the surrounding Christian and Muslim cultures rather than through the direct transmission of Second Temple works among Jews. This hypothesis will be tested through the examination of two works close to PRE in form and content, Jubilees (second century BCE) and the Cave of Treasures (sixth century CE). All three are examples of the "Rewritten Bible," which recount the history of ancient Israel independently of the biblical text. The study concludes that region, rather than religion, shaped the author’s presentation of the history of the ancient prophets and patriarchs

This book follows the origins of the Kedushta, a sequence of poems that leads up to the epitome of Jewish prayer, the Kedusha or Sanctus. It tracks back the earliest forms of prayer in late antiquity and by doing so defines the main characteristics of this genre, both from the standpoint of Rhetoric and poetics. This genre draws from Midrash and Mysticism- adjacent literary forms that influence liturgical poetry.

How has such an enigmatic and complex liturgical genre survived the twists and turns of history and is recited to this day, for over 1500 years?

The answer to this question pertains to both form and content. When analyzing form, we address rhyme, alphabetical acrostics, and different poetic forms. Those all have a specific rhetorical function in determining the structure of the poem, pushing it forward, and musically aligning the different segments. The form cannot be detached from narratology, referencing early midrash and mysticism. In addition, the emotional approach of the private prayer can express one's existential pain as part of an oppressed community. We can follow the composition of the prayer book for each community over the ages, through the first millennium, starting with Geniza fragments to the European prayer books. Finally, these poems use of sophisticated etymology, correlation by sound, leads to innovative Medieval interpretation of the Torah.

It seems that the combination of a public recitation, simulating a divine choir, the musicality of the text and emotional depth all contributed to this eternal poetic genre to penetrate cross cutting traditions of prayer throughout the ages.

Hasidic groups have myriad customs. While ordinary Jewish law (halakhah) denotes the “bar of holiness” mandated for the ordinary Jew, these customs represent the higher threshold expected of Hasidim, intended to justify their title as hasidim (“pious”). How did the hasidic masters perceive the enactment of these new norms at a time in which the halakhah had already been solidified? How did they explain the normative power of these customs over communities and individuals, and how did they justify customs that diverged from the positive halakhah? This book analyzes the answers given by nineteenth-century hasidic authors. It then examines a test case: kedushah (“holiness”), or sexual abstinence among married men, a particularly restrictive norm enacted by several twentieth-century hasidic groups. Through the use of theoretical tools and historical contextualization, the book elucidates the normative circles of hasidic life, their religious and social sources and their interrelations.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the maskilim, a group of young Jewish intellectuals who were starving for universal knowledge and for engagement with wider social circles, set out to reform Jewish society by expanding its cultural boundaries and building a bridge to the Enlightened world. Through dialogue with the non-Jewish society, and by introducing their fellow Jews to the texts and cultural goods of that society, mainly through translation, they sought to promote their social agenda and impart to their readers a new habitus, new social models of Bürgerlichkeit and Bildung, and a new awareness of civil equality and civil rights. This book explores this translational project and the ways by which it strove to affect a profound cultural change in the Jewish world.

Zohar Shavit, professor emerita at the School for Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University, is an internationally renowned authority on the history of Israeli culture, child and youth culture, and Hebrew and Jewish cultures, especially in the context of their relations with various European cultures. In 2025, she won the Israel Prize in the field of Culture and Arts for her groundbreaking research on childrens' culture, cultural transition, and the cultural history in Israeli and Jewish society.

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This volume presents a selection of the works of Professor Robert G. Goldenberg, a leading scholar of Rabbinic Judaism. From the rabbinic interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures to the formation of the Babylonian Talmud, Goldenberg explores core themes of Jewish law, history, and religious thought. This collection offers a lasting tribute to Goldenberg's enduring contributions to our understanding of the Jewish tradition.

Given Leopold Zunz’s difficult German style and the tight conciseness of his presentation, it is hardly surprising that no English translation of his Die Ritus (1859) has been published. The Hebrew edition of 2016 does not aim to place this pioneering work in the context of Jewish liturgical history, sometimes opts for a paraphrase, rather than a literal translation, and does not always make it easy to distinguish Zunz from later scholarship. There are undoubtedly English-speaking scholars in current academia who are unacquainted with German and Modern Hebrew but would benefit from reading this classic study. This volume therefore links Die Ritus with Zunz’s other scholarly works by way of a brief introduction, provides a faithful translation, without the result reading more like German than English. It reproduces Zunz’s footnotes in his own highly abbreviated form but offers as an appendix to the introductory essay a bibliographical list that explains references that may not be obvious even to a learned reader. Readers of English will now be able to reach their own conclusions about the stature of Zunz, about his contributions to the study of Jewish liturgy, and, indeed, about any shortcomings that there may have been in his scholarly, theological and political tendencies.

Recent research has considered how changing imperial contexts influence conceptions of Jewishness among ruling elites (esp. Eckhardt, Ethnos und Herrschaft, 2013). This study integrates other, often marginal, conceptions with elite perspectives. It uses the ethnic boundary making model, an empirically based sociological model, to link macro-level characteristics of the social field with individual agency in ethnic construction. It uses a wide range of written sources as evidence for constructions of Jewishness and relates these to a local-specific understanding of demographic and institutional characteristics, informed by material culture. The result is a diachronic study of how institutional changes under Seleucid, Hasmonean, and Early Roman rule influenced the ways that members of the ruling elite, retainer class, and marginalized groups presented their preferred visions of Jewishness. These sometimes-competing visions advance different strategies to maintain, rework, or blur the boundaries between Jews and others. The study provides the next step toward a thick description of Jewishness in antiquity by introducing needed systematization for relating written sources from different social strata with their contexts.

With exacting scholarship and fecund analysis, Manuel Oliveira probes through the lens of Martin Buber (1878-1965) the theological and political ambiguities of Israel’s divine election. These ambiguities became especially pronounced with the emergence of Zionism. Wary, indeed, alarmed by the tendency of some of his fellow Zionists to conflate divine chosenness with nationalism, Buber sought to secure the theological significance of election by both steering Zionism from hypertrophic nationalism and by a sustained program to revalorize what he called alternately “Hebrew Humanism.”

As Oliveira demonstrates, Buber viewed the idea of election teleologically, espousing a universal mission of Israel, which effectively calls upon Zionism to align its political and cultural project to universal objectives. Thus, in addressing a Zionist congress, he rhetorically asked, “What then is this spirit of Israel of which you are speaking? It is the spirit of fulfillment. Fulfillment of what? Fulfillment of the simple truth that man has been created for a purpose (...) Our purpose is the upbuilding of peace (...) And that is its spirit, the spirit of Israel (...) the people of Israel was charged to lead the way to righteousness and justice.”

The concept of ‘Ruakh Ra‘ah’ (Evil Spirit), is extremely rare in the Tanach, but is found much more frequently in post-Biblical rabbinic literature and even more in publications by rabbis of the last two centuries. This study focuses on the quite neglected period of responsa literature after the Second World War until the present. This literature consist fo answers given to questions about religious rules. The notion of the 'evil spirit' is strongly connected to the ritual of washing hands in the morning, but also before a meal, in connection with sexual relations and with visiting a graveyard. The washing of hands is supposed to be necessary to ward off bad influences. This ritual can be understood in between mysticism, gender studies, magic and embodied religion.

This book analyses the meaning and role of the ‘Ruakh Ra‘ah’ in a corpus of almost 200 rabbinic orthodox response from 1945-2000. What happens to the term Ruakh Ra‘ah in these modern responsa? Does the ritual persist without being associated with the Ruakh Ra‘ah, or does the term continue to be linked to the ritual, but reinterpreted in cause of the possible tension between the traditional rabbinic paradigm and the modern scientific knowledge paradigm. The connection between this ritual and the stratification of the (ultra) orthodox society and cosmological representations offers a clue to the rationale of this practice. Questions of identity, gender and community boundaries that divide insiders from outsiders (Jewish and non-Jewish) seem to be related to the discourse in the corpus on this ritual.

As the Ruakh Ra‘ah stands at the intersection between magical perceptions, religion (ritual), and premodern science (medicine) it is suitable as a possible test case for the way in which modern rabbinic responsa deal with other archaic terms and concepts that are related or comparable to the Ruakh Raah. This book is relevant to the debate on the relation of religion to the modern world as it provides insights into the ways contemporary believers deal with the modern world, and the various mechanisms to deal with potential discrepancies.

The volume contributes to the knowledge of the Samaritan history, culture and linguistics. Specialists of various fields of research bring a new look on the topics related to the Samaritans and the Hebrew and Arabic written sources, to the Samaritan history in the Roman-Byzantine period as well as to the contemporary issues of the Samaritan community.

This volume highlights the role of Jewish scholars within the field of Oriental studies in the 19th and 20^th century. It discusses their views of Islam and the "Orient" in the context of concepts such as orientalism, colonialism, and modernity. The analysis shows that Jewish oriental research provides a way of understanding some of the particularities of the boundaries between European frameworks of thought.

A collection of seventeen essays on pre-modern Hebrew poetry in honor of Wout van Bekkum. The articles in this volume all seek to examine how the religious, cultural, and social context in which the poet functioned impacted on and is visible, either explicitly or more elliptically, in their poetical oeuvre. For this purposes a broad understanding of "world" has been accepted, including both the natural world and the constructed one (society, culture, language) as well as the spiritual and emotional world. History, a pillar of the man-made constructed world, has been used to determine the boundaries: from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, and—in instances where the topic connects to older traditions—to Early Modern Judaism, i.e. pre-modern Hebrew (and Aramaic) poetry. The articles in this volume, in the breadth of their temporal and spatial range and their multiplicity of approaches and methodologies, highlight the richness of contemporary scholarship on Hebrew poetry. The volume invites the reader to engage with this astonishing body of poetry, while providing a glimpse into the world of the payṭanim, and the cultures and societies from which they drew their ininspiration and to which they made such important contributions.

Piotrkowski throws new light on a fascinating episode of ancient Jewish history that is usually left in the dark: the history of the mysterious Temple of Onias. The book focuses on the topic of the parallel Temple and at the same time casts a wide net, placing the story in the context of Jewish Diaspora life in ancient times. Ancient topics and texts are brought to bear, including epigraphy, archaeology, as well as the modern literature.

Discoveries on Mount Gerizim and in Qumran demonstrate that the final editing of the Hebrew Bible coincides with the emergence of the Samaritans as one of the different types of Judaisms from the last centuries BCE. This book discusses this new scholarly situation.

Scholars working with the Bible, especially the Pentateuch, and experts on the Samaritans approach the topic from the vantage point of their respective fields of expertise. Earlier, scholars who worked with Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies mostly could leave the Samaritan material to experts in that area of research, and scholars studying the Samaritan material needed only sporadically to engage in Biblical studies.

This is no longer the case: the pre-Samaritan texts from Qumran and the results from the excavations on Mount Gerizim have created an area of study common to the previously separated fields of research. Scholars coming from different directions meet in this new area, and realize that they work on the same questions and with much common material.This volume presents the current state of scholarship in this area and the effects these recent discoveries have for an understanding of this important epoch in the development of the Bible.

This study is concerned with the creation, composition and circulation of manuscripts of the SeMaK and concentrates on the book as an artefact. The focus of the author’s attention is the manuscripts’ material nature, their artistic embellishment and the personal touches that scribes added to them. With the act of writing a text and decorating a SeMaK manuscript, they ‘appropriated’ the text, so to speak, giving it a character of its very own. They drew on a visual language in the process – or rather, on visual languages, which occupy a special place between pure writing culture and pure painting culture. It was in this area ‘in between’ the two that spontaneous touches arose, ranging from changes in the physical arrangement of the text (mise-en-page) to drawings and doodles added in the margins.

An examination of paratextual elements broadens the reader’s knowledge about Jewish scribal culture and grants insights into medieval book art, material culture and Judeo-Christian co-existence in the Middle Ages as well as throwing some light on Jewish values, ideals and eschatological hopes.

From its modest beginnings in 1818 Berlin, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly discipline pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth and twentieth Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory supplemented traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies, initially pursued largely in German and subsequently in other vernacular languages (e.g. French, Dutch, Italian, modern Hebrew, Russian), greatly facilitated an exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and respect.

The present volume is based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, by scholars from North American, Europe, and Israel. The papers and attendant deliberations explored ramified historical and methodological issues. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a tribute to the two hundred year legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contribution to not only modern Jewish self-understand but also to the unfolding of humanistic cultural discourse.

This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and　is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

This book is the first scholarly English translation of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, a Jewish classic originally published in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was the first significant anthological commentary on the Torah, Haftorot and five Megillot. The Ze’enah U-Re’enah is a major text that was talked about but has not adequately studied, although it has been published in two hundred and seventy-four editions, including the Yiddish text and partial translation into several languages. Many generations of Jewish men and women have studied the Torah through the Rabbinic and medieval commentaries that the author of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah collected and translated in his work. It shaped their understanding of Jewish traditions and the lives of Biblical heroes and heroines. The Ze’enah U-Re’enah can teach us much about the influence of biblical commentaries, popular Jewish theology, folkways, and religious practices. This translation is based on the earliest editions of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, and the notes annotate the primary sources utilized by the author.

Isaac Breuer (1883–1946) zählt zu den bedeutendsten deutsch-jüdischen Intellektuellen zu Beginn des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Der Neoorthodoxie in der Tradition seines Großvaters S. R. Hirsch verpflichtet verhandelte er in seinem Werk den Platz der Orthodoxie in der modernen Welt. Zudem trat der Frankfurter als Aktivist der orthodoxen Weltbewegung Agudat Israel und als radikaler Verfechter des Austrittsprinzips öffentlich in Erscheinung.

Diese Studie analysiert das Werk Breuers im Kontext des Krisenbewusstseins seiner Zeit. Wie zahlreiche seiner Zeitgenossen deutete Breuer seine Gegenwart als umfassende Krise, die eindeutige Entscheidungen fordert, doch dabei bleibt immer Breuers orthodoxes Profil erkennbar. Für ihn eröffnete einzig die Treue zur Offenbarung und zum jüdischen Religionsgesetz den Weg hin zu einer individuell und kollektiv sinnvollen Existenz. Die Herrschaft der Tora war das Leitmotiv seines Denkens. Auf dieser Basis kritisierte er den neuzeitlichen Individualismus ebenso wie konkurrierende Strömungen im modernen Judentum, das Christentum, den modernen Staat und den Kapitalismus.

Tibåt Mårqe is a collection of midrashic compositions, which, in the main, rewrites the Pentateuch, expanding its sometimes laconic presentation of events and precepts. Most of it aims at providing the reader with theological, didactic and philosophical teachings, artistically associated with the passages of the Torah. Here and there poetic pieces are embedded into its otherwise prosaic text. Tibåt Mårqe is attributed to the 4th century scholar, philosopher and poet, Mårqe.
This publication of Tibåt Mårqe follows the monumental Hebrew edition of Ze’ev Ben-Hayyim, Tibåt Mårqe, a Collection of Samaritan Midrashim (Jerusalem 1988), based on a 16th century manuscript. Though he recognized the precedence of an earlier manuscript, dated to the 14th century, Ben-Hayyim was compelled to prefer the former, given the fragmentary state of the latter. He printed its fragments in parallel with the younger one, to which his annotations and discussions chiefly pertain. With the recent discovery of a great portion of the missing parts of the 14th century manuscript, this edition endeavors to present the older form of the composition. The present book may be relevant to people interested in literature,language, religion, and Samaritan studies.

It has been widely assumed that Heschel's writings are poetic inspirations devoid of philosophical analysis and unresponsive to the evil of the Holocaust. Who Is Man? (1965) contains a detailed phenomenological analyis of man and being which is directed at the main work of Martin Heidegger found primarily in Being and Time (1927) and Letter on Humanism (1946).

When the analysis of Who Is Man? is unapacked in the light of these associations it is clear that Heschel rejected poetry and metaphor as a means of theological elucidation, that he offered a profound examination of the Holocaust and that the major thrust of his thinking eschews Heidegerrian deconstruction and the postmodernism that ensued in its phenomenological wake.

Who Is Man? contains direct and indirect criticisms of Heidegger's notions of 'Dasein', 'thrownness', 'facticity' and 'submission' to name a few essential Heideggerian concepts. In using his ontological connective method in opposition to Heidegger's 'ontological difference', Heschel makes the argument that the biblical notion of Adam as a being open to transcendence stands in oppostion to the philosophical tradition from Parmenides to Heidegger and is the only basis for a redemptive view of humanity.

Hannah M Cotton’s collected papers focus on questions which have fascinated her for over four decades: the concrete relationships between law, language, administration and everyday life in Judaea and Nabataea in particular, and in the Roman world as a whole. Many of the papers, especially those devoted to the Judean Desert documents of the 2nd century CE have been widely cited. Others, having appeared in less accessible publications, may not have received the attention they deserve.　 On the whole, rather than addressing the grand narratives of world or national history, they look at the texture of life, seeking to provide tentative answers to historical questions and interpretations by paying fine attention to the details of literary and, especially, documentary evidence. Taken together they illuminate fundamental, often legal, questions concerning daily life and the exercise of Roman rule and administration in the early imperial period, and especially, their impact on life as it was lived in the province and the period where Roman and Jewish history fatefully intersected. The volume includes a complete bibliography of her publications.

This monograph discusses the Zohar, the most important book of the Kabbalah, as a late strata of the Midrashic literature. The author concentrates on the 'expanded' biblical stories in the Zohar and on its relationship to the ancient Talmudic Aggadah. The analytical and critical examination of these biblical themes reveals aspects of continuity and change in the history of the old Aggadic story and its way into the Zoharic corpus. The detailed description of this literary process also reveals the world of the authors of the Zohar, their spiritual distress, mystical orientations, and self-consciousness.

This exploration of the Judean priesthood’s role in agricultural cultivation demonstrates that the institutional reach of Second Temple Judaism (516 BCE–70 CE) went far beyond the confines of its houses of worship, while exposing an unfamiliar aspect of sacred place-making in the ancient Jewish experience. Temples of the ancient world regularly held assets in land, often naming a patron deity as landowner and affording the land sanctity protections. Such arrangements can provide essential background to the Hebrew Bible’s assertion that God is the owner of the land of Israel. They can also shed light on references in early Jewish literature to the sacred landholdings of the priesthood or the temple.

The present volume is the seventeenth and last in this series of the Jerusalem Talmud. The four tractates of the Second Order - Ta'aniot, Megillah, Hagigah, Mo'ed Qatan (Mašqin) - deal with different fasts and holidays as well as with the pilgrimage to the Temple. The texts are accompanied by an English translation and presented with full use of existing Genizah texts and with an extensive commentary explaining the Rabbinic background.

Der Band thematisiert die Frage, inwieweit die Bezeichnung Religio licita für das Judentum zulässig ist, und welche Relevanz sie für die Beschreibung des Verhältnisses von Römischem Staat zum Judentum hatte. Dies betrifft nicht allein das Judentum, sondern auch die Frage nach den Differenzierungsprozessen von Juden- und Christentum, auch, weil der Begriff selbst nur von christlichen Schriftstellern ab der Wende zum 3. Jahrhundert verwendet wird.

This volume of essays constitutes a critical evaluation of Martin Buber’s concept of dialogue as a trans-disciplinary hermeneutic method. So conceived, dialogue has two distinct but ultimately convergent vectors. The first is directed to the subject of one’s investigation: one is to listen to the voice of the Other and to suspend all predetermined categories and notions that one may have of the Other; dialogue is, first and foremost, the art of unmediated listening. One must allow the voice of the Other to question one’s pre-established positions fortified by professional, emotional, intellectual and ideological commitments. Dialogue is also to be conducted between various disciplinary perspectives despite the regnant tendency to academic specialization. In recent decades‚ an increasing number of scholars have come to share Buber’s position to foster cross-disciplinary conversation, if but to garner, as Max Weber aruged, “useful questions upon which he would not so easily hit upon from his own specialized point of view.” Accordingly, the objective of this volume is to explore the reception of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue in some of the disciplines that fell within the purview of his own writings: Anthropology, Hasidism, Religious Studies, Psychology and Psychiatry.

Rabbinic hermeneutics in ancient Judaism reflects this multifaceted world of the text and of reality, seen as a world of reference worth commentary. As a mirror, it includes this world but perhaps also falsifies reality, adapting it to one's own aims and necessities. It consists of four parts:
Part I, considered as introduction, is the description of the "Rabbinic Workshop" (Officina Rabbinica), the rabbinic world where the student plays a role and a reformation of a reformation always takes place, the world where the mirror was created and manufactured.
Part II deals with the historical environment, the world of reference of rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Reflecting Roman Religion);
Part III focuses on magic and the sciences, as ancient (political and empirical) activities of influence in the double meaning of receiving and adopting something and of attempt to produce an effect on persons and objects (Performing the Craft of Sciences and Magic).
Part IV addresses the rabbinic concern with texts (Reflecting on Languages and Texts) as the main area of "influence" of the rabbinic academy in a space between the texts of the past and the real world of the present.

Parallel to the Halakhic laws, the minhagim (customs) are dependent on local practices and the regional schools of sages and rabbis. The minhagim played a decisive role in the history of the Jewish communities and in the formation of traditions of religious rulings. They gave stability, continuity, and authority to the local institutions.

The impact of Jewish custom on daily life cannot be overestimated. Evolving spontaneously as an ascending process, it presents undercurrents that emanate from the folk, gradually bringing about changes that eventually become part of the legislative code. It further reflects influences of social, cultural, and mythological tendencies and local historical elements of every-day life of the period.

The aim of this volume is to examine the concept of minhag in the broadest sense of the word. Focusing on the relationship between various types of customs and their impact on every aspect of Jewish life, the volume studies the historical, anthropological, religious, and cultural development and function of rites and rituals in establishing the Jewish self-definition and the identity of the local communities that adhered to them. The volume’s articles cover the subject of custom from three perspectives: an analysis of the theoretical and legal definition of custom, an analysis of the social and historical aspects of custom, and an anecdotal study of several particular customs.

Customs are a wonderful historical prism by which to examine fluctuations and changes in Jewish life.

This volume of the Jerusalem Talmud publishes four tractates of the Second Order, Šeqalim, Sukkah, Roš Haššanah, and Yom Tov. These tractates deal with financial issues concerning the Temple service, with the festival of Tabernacles, the observations at New Year, as well as with holiday observation in general. The tractates are vocalized by the rules of Rabbinic Hebrew accompanied by an English translation and an extensive commentary.

The Nuremberg Miscellany [Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Bibliothek, 8° Hs. 7058 (Rl. 203)] is a unique work of scribal art and illumination. Its costly parchment leaves are richly adorned and illustrated with multicolour paint and powdered gold. It was penned and illustrated in southern Germany – probably Swabia – in 1589 and is signed by a certain Eliezer b. Mordechai the Martyr.

The Miscellany is a relatively thin manuscript. In its present state, it holds a total of 46 folios, 44 of which are part of the original codex and an additional bifolio that was attached to it immediately or soon after its production.

The book is a compilation of various Hebrew texts, most of which pertain to religious life. Others are home liturgies, Biblical exegeses, comments on rites and customs, moralistic texts, homiletic and ethical discourses, and an extensive collection of home liturgies, its major part being dedicated to the life cycle.

The unparalleled text compilation of the Nuremberg Miscellany on the one hand, and the naïve, untrained illustrations on the other hand, are puzzling. Its illustrations are hardly mindful of volume, depth or perspective, and their folk-art nature suggests that an unprofessional artist, possibly even the scribe himself, may have executed them. Whoever the illustrator was, his vast knowledge of Jewish lore unfolds layer after layer in a most intricate way. His sharp eye for detail renders the images he executed a valid representation of contemporary visual culture.

The iconography of the Nuremberg Miscellany, with its 55 decorated leaves, featuring 25 text illustrations, falls into two main categories: biblical themes, and depictions of daily life, both sacred and mundane. While the biblical illustrations rely largely on artistic rendering and interpretation of texts, the depictions of daily life are founded mainly on current furnishings and accoutrements in Jewish homes. The customs and rituals portrayed in the miscellany attest not only to the local Jewish Minhag, but also to the influence and adaptation of local Germanic or Christian rites. They thus offer first-hand insights to the interrelations between the Jews and their neighbors.

Examined as historical documents, the images in the Nuremberg Miscellany are an invaluable resource for reconstructing Jewish daily life in Ashkenaz in the early modern period. In a period from which only scanty relics of Jewish material culture have survived, retrieving the pictorial data from images incorporated in literary sources is of vital importance in providing the missing link. Corroborated by similar objects from the host society and with descriptions in contemporary Jewish and Christian written sources, the household objects, as well as the ceremonial implements depicted in the manuscript can serve as effective mirrors for the material culture of an affluent German Jewish family in the Early Modern period.

The complete Nuremberg Miscellany is reproduced in the appendix of this book.

Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.

Though typically associated more with Judaism than Christianity, the status and sacrality of Hebrew has nonetheless been engaged by both religious cultures in often strikingly similar ways. The language has furthermore played an important, if vexed, role in relations between the two. Hebrew between Jews and Christians closely examines this frequently overlooked aspect of Judaism and Christianity's common heritage and mutual competition.

The volume collects eighteen studies authored by specialists of various fields. The contributions gathered in this volume mostly originate in lectures delivered at the 8th Congress of the Société d’Etudes Samaritaines (Erfurt, 2012). In these studies, specialists of various fields deal with various aspects of Samaritan languages, especially Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic, with central Samaritan texts, mostly the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch, the Samaritan Aramaic Targum, as well as medieval Samaritan exegetical texts in Arabic, and also with traditions relating to the image of the Samaritans, as emerging from the New Testament and Rabbinic literature, to Samaritan theology and to Samaritan genealogy, and with magical traditions as found in Samaritan amulets, and with the contribution of Samaritan traditions to the literary history of the Pentateuch. The volume provides thus a multifarious reflection of the current status quaestionis in Samaritan studies.

This volume of the Jerusalem Talmud comprises the fourth and fifth tractates of the Second Order. Pesahim introduces the prescriptions regarding Passover; Yoma covers regulations related to Yom Kippur, especially the role of the Kohen Gadol and the order of services. The tractates are vocalized by the rules of Rabbinic Hebrew with an English translation. They are presented with full use of existing Genizah texts and with an extensive commentary explaining the Rabbinic background necessary for understanding the texts.

Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine brings together an international community of historians, literature scholars and archaeologists to explore how the integrated study of rabbinic texts and archaeology increases our understanding of both types of evidence, and of the complex culture which they together reflect. This volume reflects a growing consensus that rabbinic culture was an “embodied” culture, presenting a series of case studies that demonstrate the value of archaeology for the contextualization of rabbinic literature. It steers away from later twentieth-century trends, particularly in North America, that stressed disjunction between archaeology and rabbinic literature, and seeks a more holistic approach.

Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University and long-time president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has published more than 200 articles and sixteen books and edited aboout 90 books and collections. The vast majority of his work has been accessible, however, only to specialists who read modern Hebrew or French. Bar-Asher’s groundbreaking articles on the dialects of rabbinic literature are classics. In more recent years he has brought the same breadth and depth of grammatical knowledge, and philological acumen, to the study of older classical Hebrew texts, including literary and epigraphic texts.
This volume presents studies of individual words and verses within the Bible, as well as broader thematic discussions of biblical language and its long reception-history, down through medieval scribes and modern lexicographers. Also represented are Bar-Asher’s penetrating studies of Qumran texts and languages, which illuminate both the linguistic traditions reflected in these texts and the scribal culture from which they emerged. The third section contains studies of Mishnaic Hebrew. There are both sweeping surveys of the field and its accomplishments and challenges, and studies of specific phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features.

Die samaritanischen Überlieferungen finden in der Bibelwissenschaft nach wie vor zu wenig Beachtung. Der vorliegende Band mit Beiträgen eines 2010 in Zürich abgehaltenen Symposiums stellt daher die Geschichte der Samaritaner und die Überlieferungen über sie in den biblischen Quellen einerseits und die Perspektiven auf die biblische, frühjüdische und frühchristliche Geschichte in den samaritanischen Quellen andererseits gegenüber. Die Beiträge reichen von der Bedeutung des Samaritanischen Pentateuchs und dem Verhältnis des Garizim-Tempels zum Jerusalemer Tempel über die wechselseitigen Ursprungserzählungen, die samaritanische Geschichte in der Alexanderzeit, das Bild der Samaritaner im Neuen Testament und das Bild Jesu und der frühen Christen in samaritanischen Quellen bis hin zur antisamaritanischen Polemik der Rabbinen und den Religionsgesprächen in arabischer Zeit. Durch die wechselseitige Wahrnehmung biblischer bzw. frühjüdischer und samaritanischer Quellen sollen neue Diskursräume eröffnet und Impulse für die weitere Analyse und Auswertung der samaritanischen Quellen gegeben werden.

This volume of the Jerusalem Talmud publishes the first two tractates of the Second Order, Šabbat and ‘Eruvin. These tractates deal with discussion of all regulations regarding Shabbat, the weekly day of rest, including the activities prohibited on Shabbat. The tractate ‘Eruvin covers questions of definition of what is allowed to do on Shabbat. The Second Order is the last one to be published in Heinrich W. Guggenheimer’s edition of the Jerusalem Talmud.

Grit Schorch hat die erste umfassende Untersuchung zur Sprachauffassung des jüdischen Philosophen Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) vorgelegt und damit ein Desiderat der Forschung erfüllt.
Die Analyse von Mendelssohns Sprachphilosophie führt den Leser quer durch die deutschen und hebräischen Teile seines Oeuvres. Die derart neu gewonnene Perspektive auf Übersetzungstheorie, Ästhetik, Metaphysik, Logik, Offenbarungsauffassung und Politik lässt einen erkenntnis- und wissenschaftstheoretischen Fallibilismus hervortreten, der von Mendelssohn in der Philosophie des jüdischen Mittelalters verankert und in der Auseinandersetzung mit den skeptischen Strömungen der Aufklärung geschärft wird.
Mendelssohns Werk markiert den Anfang zweier Spracherneuerungsbewegungen, im Zuge derer Deutsch als jüdische Sprache und Hebräisch als Nationalsprache etabliert wurden. Sein philosophisch begründeter Multilingualismus wird als Alternative zu monolingualen Nationalsprachen-Konzepten beschrieben. Der Fluchtpunkt der Sprachphilosophie Mendelssohns ist damit keine Metaphysik, sondern die politische Idee einer gerechten, sozialen Ordnung. Die Dialektik von menschlicher und heiliger Sprache, von „irdischer und himmlischer Politik“ bestimmt diese Idee.

Papers in this volume were presented at the seventh international conference of the Société d’Études Samaritaines held at the Reformed Theological Academy of Pápa, Hungary in July 17–25, 2008. The discussed Samaritan topics permeate different areas of biblical studies: The question of the Samaritan Pentateuch has a serious impact on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. The pre-Samaritan text-type among the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the dating and isolation of Samaritan features of the Samaritan Pentateuch provide fresh and important data for gaining a better understanding of the composition of the Torah/Pentateuch. New reconstructions of the early history of the Samaritans have a great effect on the history of the Jewish people in the Persian and Hellenistic period. As a distinct group in the centuries around the turn of the Common Era in Palestine, Samaritans played an important role in the social and religious formation of early Judaism and early Christianity. Living for centuries under Islamic rule, Samaritans provide a good example of linguistic, cultural and religious developments experienced by ethnic and religious group in Islamic contexts.

Die Wissenschaft des Judentums hat den Blick auf die jüdische Geschichte und Kultur grundlegend verändert. Dieses Buch untersucht erstmals die Zeitschriften dieser universitär randständigen und transnationalen jüdischen Wissenschaftsbewegung aus kommunikations- und wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Perspektive. Die systematische Betrachtung von mehr als dreißig vorwiegend deutschsprachigen Zeitschriften, die im Laufe des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts in ihrem Umfeld entstanden, dokumentiert deren funktionale Bedeutung. Als Praktik der Gelehrtenkommunikation und maßgebliche Instrumente der Präsentation und Repräsentation von Wissenschaft in Öffentlichkeit nahm die jüdische Wissenschaftspresse stets eine besondere Stellung ein. Als vorrangiger Aushandlungsrahmen eines jüdischen Wissenschaftsdiskurses erweisen sich diese Zeitschriften als umfassende Perspektive auf die Geschichte der Wissenschaft des Judentums und damit auf die vielfältigen Versuche, das Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Judentum zu bestimmen. Wissenschaftliches Erkenntnisstreben diente hier nicht allein dem Verständnis des historischen Judentums, sondern ganz im Sinne der Zeit der Gestaltung von Gegenwart und Zukunft.

Judentum und Christentum haben ihre offiziell beauftragten Amtsträger, um die vielfältigen Aufgaben der Gemeinschaft zu erfüllen: zu sammeln und zu lehren, seelsorglich tätig zu sein und zu predigen, Gottesdienste zu leiten und Lebenshilfe zu geben, Rituale zu vollziehen am Beginn des Lebens, an dessen Ende und mitten im Leben, in religiösen Fragen zu entscheiden, administrativ tätig zu werden und vielleicht sogar ‛zwischen Himmel und Erde’ zu vermitteln.
Die konkreten Verwirklichungsformen und Funktionen des Amtes (und der Amtsträger) sind dabei einem ständigen Wandel unterworfen. Mit diesem Funktionswandel reagieren Religionsgemeinschaften auf die sich verändernden Bedingungen des Glaubens und der religiösen Praxis. Die Beiträge gehen diesen Erwartungen an geistliche Amtsträger, an ihre Identität und Legitimation im Wandel der letzten Jahrhunderte nach und bringen diese auf zwei Ebenen zur Sprache: auf der Ebene der Leitbilder und auf der Ebene der realen Erscheinungsformen, die die jeweiligen geschichtlichen, kulturellen und sozialen Gegebenheiten hervorgebracht haben.

This volume presents the theory of culture of the Russian‑born German Jewish social philosopher David Koigen (1879–1933). Heir to Hermann Cohen’s neo‑Kantian interpretation of Judaism, he transforms the religion of reason into an ethical Intimitätsreligion. He draws upon a great variety of intellectual currents, among them, Max Scheler’s philosophy of values, the historical sociology of Max Weber, the sociology of religion of Émile Durkheim, Ernst Troeltsch and Georg Simmel and American pragmatism. Influenced by his personal experience of marginality in German academia yet the same time unconstrained by the dictates of the German Jewish discourse, Koigen shapes these theoretical strands into an original argument which unfolds along two trajectories: theodicy of culture and ethos. Distinguished from ethics, ethos identifies the non-formal factors that foster a group’s sense of collective identity as it adapts to continuous change. From a Jewish perspective, ethos is grounded in the biblical covenant as the paradigm of a social contract and corporate liability. Although the normative content of the covenantal ethos is subject to gradual secularization, its metaphysical and existential assumptions, Koigen argues, continue to inform Jewish self-understanding. The concept of ethos identifies the dialectic of tradition as it shapes Jewish religious consciousness, and, in turn, is shaped by the evolving cultural and axiological sensibilities. In consonance, Jewish identity cannot be reduced to ethnicity or a purely secular culture. Urban develops these fragmentary and inchoate theories into a sociology of religious knowledge and suggests to read Koigen not just as a Jewish sociologist but as the first sociologist of Judaism who proposes to overcome the dogmatic anti-metaphysical stance of European sociology.

This work is of importance to anyone with an interest in whether women, especially Jewish Ashkenazic women, had a Renaissance. It details the participation in the Querelle des Femmes and Power of Women topos as expressed in this hagiographic work on the lives of biblical women including the apocryphal Judith. The Power of Women topos is discussed in the context of the reception of the Amazon myth in Jewish literature and the domestication of powerful female figures. In the Querelle our author pleads with husbands for generosity and respect for their wives’ piety. Whether women living in the Renaissance experienced a renaissance is a debate raging since Joan Kelly raised the possibility that this historic phenomenon essentially did not affect women. The question is raised with reference to the women depicted in Many Pious Women. These topics find their expression in a richly annotated translation with extensive introductory essays of a unique 16th–century manuscript in Western Yiddish (Judeo–German) written in Italy. The text will also be useful to scholars of the history of Yiddish and theorists of its development. Women everywhere, gender and Renaissance scholars, Yiddishists and linguists will all welcome this work now available for the very first time in the original text with an English translation.

This is volume 13 of the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Within the Fourth Order Neziqin (“damages”), these two tractates deal with various types of oaths and their consequences (Ševu‛ot) and laws pertaining to Jews living amongst gentiles, including regulations about the interaction between Jews and “idolators” (‛Avodah Zarah).

Since the Enlightenment period, German-Jewish intellectuals have been prominent voices in the multi-facetted discourse on the reinterpretation of Jewish tradition in light of modern thinking. Paul Mendes-Flohr, one of the towering figures of current scholarship on German-Jewish intellectual history, has made invaluable contributions to a better understanding of the religious, cultural and political dimensions of these thinkers’ encounter with German and European culture, including the tension between their loyalty to Judaism and the often competing claims of non-Jewish society and culture. This volume assembles essays by internationally acknowledged scholars in the field who intend to honor Mendes-Flohr’s work by portraying the abundance of religious, philosophical, aesthetical and political aspects dominating the thinking of those famous thinkers populating German Jewry's rich and complex intellectual world in the modern period. It also provides a fresh theoretical outlook on trends in Jewish intellectual history, raising new questions concerning the dialectics of assimilation. In addition to that, the volume sheds light on thinkers and debates that hitherto have not been accorded full scholarly attention.

Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) war eine der charismatischsten Rabbiner-Persönlichkeiten im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts. Eine Mischung aus deutsch-patriotischem Bildungsbürgertum und antimodernistischer Gelehrsamkeit, vereinigte er in seiner Person den Rabbiner, Pädagogen, Politiker und Theologen. Er wirkte in Oldenburg, Emden, Nikolsburg und Frankfurt am Main, wo er seine größten Erfolge feierte und seine bittersten Niederlagen erlitt: Hier wurde er, protegiert von den Frankfurter Rothschilds, zum Begründer der deutschen Neo-Orthodoxie, musste aber auch miterleben, wie sich nahezu das gesamte deutsche Judentum gegen ihn wandte. Für die einen ein strahlender Meteor, für die anderen ein religiöser Fanatiker, mischte er sich überall ein, wo es das Judentum vor dem Mythos von Zeitgeist und ewigem Fortschritt zu warnen galt. Gegen Historismus und Naturalismus stellte Hirsch wieder das erste Gebot und die für das Judentum typischen Rituale und Feste ins Zentrum. Mit diesem überzeitlichen Ideal wollte er das Judentum vor den Verirrungen und täglichen Versuchungen des nicht mehr gegenseitigen Lebens bewahren. Es ist daher kein Zufall, dass die jüdischen Existentialisten des 20. Jahrhunderts eben diese Gedanken aufnahmen, so dass wir sie heute etwa in Franz Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlösung wiederfinden können.

Auf der Grundlage neu entdeckter Dokumente wird die Biographie des aus einer Converso-Familie stammenden Kabbalisten Abraham Cohen de Herrera alias Alonso Nuñez de Herrera (gest. 1635 in Amsterdam) im Kontext seiner spanisch verfassten Neuinterpretation der lurianischen Kabbala rekonstruiert. Im Mittelpunkt stehen seine wichtigsten Lebensstationen und die Adaption italienischer Renaissance-Philosophie, die Herrera in ein eigenes Konzept humanistischer Bildung integriert, zu der auch die jüdische Tradition mit lurianischen Vorstellungen aus der Schule von Israel Saruq gehört. Insbesondere wird Herreras Einführung in Logik bzw. Dialektik berücksichtigt und die These aufgestellt, dass er nicht nur als Begründer der metaphorischen Interpretation lurianischer Symbole gelten, sondern sein spezifischer Zugang auf dem Hintergrund seiner Lebenserfahrung und Ausbildung als „humanistische Kabbala“ auf den Begriff gebracht werden kann. In der Geschichte der jüdischen Mystik ist diese Verhältnisbestimmung von Philosophie und Kabbala mit humanistisch-pädagogischer Intention singulär. Erstmals wird auch Herreras Einfluss auf die christliche Geistesgeschichte durch Christian Knorr von Rosenroths Kabbala denudata in vollem Umfang gewürdigt.

Der Rabbiner und Historiker Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), einer der Mitbegründer der Wissenschaft des Judentums, gehört zu den bedeutendsten intellektuellen Gestalten des deutschen Judentums im 19. Jahrhundert. In Auseinandersetzung mit der zeitgenössischen Geschichtswissenschaft, Theologie und Orientalistik in Deutschland widmete er sich der intellektuellen Verteidigung der Existenzberechtigung des Judentums in der Moderne gegen antijüdische Tendenzen der Mehrheitsgesellschaft. Indem er den tiefgreifenden Einfluss der jüdischen Tradition auf Christentum und Islam betonte und dem Judentum eine messianische religiös-ethische Mission in der Menschheitsgeschichte zuschrieb, stellte er die jüdisch-christlichen und jüdisch-muslimischen Beziehungen auf eine völlig neue Grundlage. Zugleich wandte er sich gegen den orthodoxen Traditionalismus und wurde zu einer führenden Stimme des Reformjudentums.
International renommierte Historikerinnen und Historiker rekonstruieren in dem Sammelband Geigers Biographie und Denkweg im Kontext der intellektuellen Debatten seiner Zeit, untersuchen die vielfältigen Facetten seines Werkes und gehen den Implikationen seines Denkens für das Selbstverständnis des modernen Judentums im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert nach.

The 19th century saw the rise of Biblical Criticism in German universities, culminating in Wellhausen’s radical revision of the history of biblical times and religion. For German-Jewish intellectuals, the academic discipline promised emancipation from traditional Christian readings of Scripture – but at the same time suffered from what was perceived as anti-Jewish bias, this time in scholarly robes. “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible”‎ describes the German-Jewish strategies to cope with Biblical Criticism – varying from an enthusiastic welcome in the early decades, through modified adoption in Jewish Reform circles, to resolute rejection in the Orthodox camp. The study surveys the awareness and attitudes towards Biblical Criticism in the popular German-Jewish periodicals, and analyzes in depth the works of the first modern Jewish historian I. M. Jost (1793–1860), of the theologian S. L. Steinheim (1789–1866), and of the Reform activist Siegmund Maybaum (1844–1919).

Seitdem im Jahr 1822 der Begriff von einer „Wissenschaft des Judentums“ erstmals verwendet wurde, bezeichnet er die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung von Juden mit allen Bereichen des jüdischen Lebens und der jüdischen Geschichte bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ein Aspekt, der in der wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung vernachlässigt wurde, ist die Beschäftigung jüdischer Wissenschaftler mit dem Christentum.
Der vorliegende Sammelband thematisiert, wie ausgewählte Autoren der Wissenschaft des Judentums sich mit verschiedenen Aspekten des Christentums auseinandergesetzt haben und zeigt, welche Rückwirkungen dies auf die Etablierung ihres Judentums hatte.
Dabei wird exemplarisch in zwei Richtungen gearbeitet. Zum einen wird historisch gefragt, warum und auf welche Weise ausgewählte Vertreter der Wissenschaft des Judentums Untersuchungen zum Christentum durchgeführt haben. Zum anderen lässt sich auch in systematischer Hinsicht eine konstitutive Bedeutung des Christentums für die Konturierung des eigenen, jüdischen Standpunkts erkennen.

The articles in this volume originated from lectures given in two meetings devoted to the Samaritans. The first was the sixth conference of the Société d’Etudes Samaritaines, which took place at the University of Haifa in July 2004. The second meeting was part of the SBL International Conference in Vienna, July 2007.
The volume reflects the current state of research on the Samaritans. It presents a wide spectrum of approaches, including historical questions, the political, religious and social context of the Samaritans in the past and present, linguistic approaches, the role of the Samaritans in the Talmudic literature, and questions of identity of the Samaritans up to now.

Rabbinic midrash included Egyptian religious concepts. These textual images are compared to Egyptian culture. Midrash is analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective utilizing insights from the discipline of Egyptology. Egyptian textual icons in rabbinic texts are analyzed in their Egyptian context.
Rabbinic knowledge concerning Egypt included: Alexandrian teachers are mentioned in rabbinic texts; Rabbis traveled to Alexandria; Alexandrian Jews traveled to Israel; trade relations existed; Egyptian, as well as Roman and Byzantine, artifacts relating to Egypt.
Egyptian elements in the rabbinic discourse: the Nile inundation, the Greco-Roman Nile god, festivals, mummy portraits, funeral customs, language, Pharaohs, Cleopatra VII, magic, the gods Isis and Serapis. The hermeneutical role of Egyptian cultural icons in midrash is explored. Methods applied: comparative literature; semiotics; notions of time and space; the dialectical model of Theodor Adorno; theories of cultural identity by Jürgen Habermas; iconography (Mary Hamer); landscape theory; embodied fragments of memory (Jan Assmann).

Volume 12 in the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Tractates Sanhedrin and Makkot belong together as one tractate, covering procedural law for panels of arbitration, communal rabbinic courts (in bare outline) and an elaborate construction of hypothetical criminal courts supposedly independent of the king’s administration. Tractate Horaiot, an elaboration of Lev. 4:1–26, defines the roles of High Priest, rabbinate, and prince in a Commonwealth strictly following biblical rules.

The author applies the fields of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literature to Talmudic texts. In opposition to the perception of Judaism as a legal system, he argues that the Talmud demands inner spiritual effort, to which the trait of humility and the refinement of the ego are central. This leads to the question of the attitude to the Other, in general, and especially to women. The author shows that the Talmud places the woman (who represents humility and good-heartedness in the Talmudic narratives) above the character of the male depicted in these narratives as a scholar with an inflated sense of self-importance.
In the last chapter (that in terms of its scope and content could be a freestanding monograph) the author employs the insights that emerged from the preceding chapters to present a new reading of the Creation narrative in the Bible and the Rabbinic commentaries. The divine act of creation is presented as a primal sexual act, a sort of dialogic model of the consummate sanctity that takes its place in man’s spiritual life when the option of opening one’s heart to the other in a male-female dialogue is realized.

Dieser aggadische mittelalterliche Midrasch, der in homiletischer Interpretation Verse aus Genesis und Exodus behandelt, war bisher nur in einer der beiden Erstdruckvarianten bekannt. In dieser Texttradition enthält der Midrasch neben der Akeda auch ein Endkapitel mit apokalyptischen Motiven wie Gog und Magog und dem Endfeind Armilus. Anhand von 17 Handschriften aus der Zeit vom 13. Jahrhundert bis zum Erstdruck 1519 wurde eine frühe Texttradition erforscht, die als Vorläuferin bzw. Grundlage der bekannten Version zu betrachten ist und die ebenfalls 1519 erstmals gedruckt wurde. Kernstück dieser Grundform ist die Einführung eines Völkerengels Ägyptens namens Uzza und ein Kommentar zu Ex 15,1-18, in den auch Teile der Geschichte des Moses und die Zehn Plagen aufgenommen wurden. Umfangreiche Textanalysen zeigen frühe, aber auch zeitgenössische Quellen auf, während Vergleiche mit der mittelalterlichen aschkenasischen Synagogalpoesie auf Einflüsse von historischen Ereignissen wie den Kreuzzügen hinzuweisen scheinen. Teile beider Traditionsformen wurden, wahrscheinlich im 15. Jahrhundert, volkssprachlich in Jiddisch und in Reimen rezipiert.

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer represents a late development in “midrash”, or classical rabbinic interpretation, that has enlightened, intrigued and frustrated scholars of Jewish culture for the past two centuries. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer’s challenge to scholarship includes such issues as the work’s authorship and authenticity, an asymmetrical literary structure as well as its ambiguous relationship with a variety of rabbinic, Islamic and Hellenistic works of interpretation. This cluster of issues has contributed to the confusion about the work’s structure, origins and identity. Midrash and Multiplicity addresses the problems raised by this equivocal work, and uses Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer in order to assess the nature of “midrash”, and the renewal of Jewish interpretive culture, during its transition to the medieval era of the early “Geonim”.

Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921–2007), der bekannte Judaist und Historiker, begann seine akademische Laufbahn 1940 an der Berliner Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Im Jahr 1943 gelang ihm die Flucht aus dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland in die Schweiz. Als Wissenschaftler wirkte er an den Universitäten von Zürich, Basel, Bern, Frankfurt a.M. und Berlin.

Schon früh setzte sich Ehrlich für einen Dialog zwischen Juden und Christen ein. Während des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils war Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich als Berater des Kardinal Augustin Bea an der Ausarbeitung der Erklärung Nostrae Aetate über die Beziehungen der Katholischen Kirche zu den nichtchristlichen Religionen beteiligt.

Dieser Band vereint Texte von Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich zur Geschichte, Theologie und Ethik des Judentums und ehrt damit den Begründer der Reihe Studia Judaica. Sie verdeutlichen die Bandbreite seines wissenschaftlichen Interesses und sein lebenslanges Streben, Wissen über jüdische Religion und Kultur einem breiten Publikum zu vermitteln.

The opening sections of some exegetical Midrashim deal with the same type of material that is found in introductions to medieval rabbinic Bible commentaries. The application of Goldberg’s form analysis to these sections reveals the new form “Inner-Midrashic Introduction” (IMI) as a thematic discourse on introductory issues to biblical books. By its very nature the IMI is embedded within the comments on the first biblical verse (1:1). Further analysis of medieval rabbinic Bible commentary introductions in terms of their formal, thematic, and material characteristics, reveals that a high degree of continuity exists between them and the IMIs, including another newly discovered form, the “Inner-Commentary Introduction”. These new discoveries challenge the current view that traces the origin of Bible introduction in Judaism exclusively to non-Jewish models. They also point to another important link between the Midrashim and the commentaries, i.e., the decomposition of the functional form midrash in the new discoursive context of the commentaries. Finally, the form analysis demonstrates how larger discourses are formed in the exegetical Midrashim.

The present volume is the eleventh in the series of the Jerusalem Talmud, the first in a three volume edition, translation, and commentary of the Fourth Order Neziqin.
The thirty chapters of Neziqin that deal with most aspects of Civil Law are usually divided into three parts, or “gates”, known as the First Gate, Bava qamma, the Middle Gate, Bava mesi‘a, and the Last Gate, Bava batra.

In contrast to the Babylonian Talmud, the treatment in the Jerusalem Talmud is fragmentary. The reason for this is a matter of controversy, discussed in the Introduction to the Tractate.

Die Autorin analysiert die politische Konzeption des Messias als König und Gesetzgeber bei Maimonides in seinen Briefen, in Pereq Heleq sowie in Mishneh Torah. Besonderes Augenmerk liegt auf folgenden Schwerpunkten: a) die Konzeption des König-Philosophen bei Platon und Aristoteles; b) die karäischen Einflüsse auf Pereq Heleq sowie die Einflüsse der Mu'taziliten und der Ash'ariten durch die karäische Vermittlung; c) die individuelle und gemeinschaftliche Dimension des ´olam ha-ba im Werk Maimonides’; d.) die Beziehung zwischen Philosophie und Gesetz im Mishneh Torah und deren eschatologische Konzeption im Vergleich zu Al-Farabis politischen und religionsphilosophischen Werken. Die Analyse basiert auf einer ausführlichen Lektüre der jüdischen, arabischen und judäoarabischen Quellen.
Ziel der Autorin ist es, eine Lücke zu schließen in der politisch-philosophischen Kette zwischen Platon, Aristoteles, Al-Farabi und Maimonides in Bezug auf den messianischen König. Anhand der Denkstrukturen der jüdisch-islamischen Epoche zwischen dem 8. und dem 12. Jahrhundert wird der politische Charakter des König-Messias sowie seine spezifische Darstellung im intellektuellen Milieu von Maimonides konstruiert.

This volume concludes the edition, translation, and commentary of the third order of the Jerusalem Talmud. The pentateuchal expression lqkh 'ššh “to take as wife” is more correctly translated either as “to acquire as wife” or “to select as wife”. The Tractate Qiddušin deals with all aspects of acquisition as well as the permissible selections of wives and the consequences of illicit relations.

In medieval Ashkenaz piyyut commentary was a popular genre that consisted of ‛open texts’ that continued to be edited by almost each copyist. Although some early commentators can be identified, it is mainly compilers that are responsible for the transmitted form of text. Based on an ample corpus of Ashkenazic commentaries the study provides a taxonomy of commentary elements, including linguistic explanations, treatment of hypotexts, and medieval elements, and describes their use by different commentators and compilers. It also analyses the main techniques of compilation and the various ways they were employed by compilers. Different types of commentaries are described that target diverse audiences by using varied sets of commentary elements and compilatory techniques. Several commentaries are edited to illustrate the different commentary types.

It is a widespread idea that the roots of the Christian sermon can be found in the Jewish derasha. But the story of the interrelation of the two homiletical traditions, Jewish and Christian, from New Testament times to the present day is still untold. Can homiletical encounters be registered? Is there a common homiletical history - not only in the modern era, but also in rabbinic times and in the Middle Ages? Which current developments affect Jewish and Christian preaching today, in the 21st century? And, most important, what consequences may result from this mutual perception of Jewish and Christian homiletics for homiletical research and the practice of preaching?

This book offers the papers of the first international conference (Bamberg, Germany, 6th to 8th March 2007) which brought together Jewish and Christian scholars to discuss Jewish and Christian homiletics in their historical development and relationship and to sketch out common homiletical projects.

Almost five hundred years after his death, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) remains a legendary figure of Sephardic history, and above all of the Expulsion of 1492. There are numerous “portraits” that have been painted of him by pre-modern and modern scholars. And still we hesitate and cannot discern which is the true one. This first critical edition of Abravanel’s Portuguese and Hebrew letters opens a unique window on a complex cultural process of assimilation and dissimulation of humanism among the fifteenth-century Jewish elite. On the one hand, it establishes Abravanel’s assimilation of Iberian humanism and of major aspects of the Petrarchian consolatio; on the other hand, it points at the strategies used by him to dissimulate and adapt humanism to Jewish leadership. The duality of Jewish humanists like Don Isaac was obviously a great richness, but it indicated as well their difficulty in expressing themselves coherently and comprehensively in one of the two agoras - Jewish or Christian – in which they were involved as literati and writers. The present edition and study of Abravanel’s Portuguese and Hebrew letters sheds a new light on the complexity of this new figure of the Jewish humanist.

The ninth volume of this edition, translation, and commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud contains two Tractates.
The first Tractate, “Documents”, treats divorce law and principles of agency when written documents are required. Collateral topics are the rules for documents of manumission, those for sealed documents whose contents may be hidden from witnesses, the rules by which the divorced wife can collect the moneys due her, the requirement that both divorcer and divorcee be of sound mind, and the rules of conditional divorce. The second Tractate, “Nazirites”, describes the Nasirean vow and is the main rabbinic source about the impurity of the dead.

As in all volumes of this edition, a (Sephardic rabbinic) vocalized text is presented, with parallel texts used as source of variant readings. A new translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary explaining the rabbinic background of all statements and noting Talmudic and related parallels. Attention is drawn to the extensive Babylonization of the Giṭṭin text compared to genizah texts.

This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the emergence of the new biblical culture.

It describes the circumstances and processes that turned Holy Scripture into the Book of Books and into the history of the biblical period and of the people – the Jewish people. It deals with the encounter of the Jews with modern biblical criticism and the archaeological research of the Ancient Near East and with contemporary archaeology.

The middle section discusses the extensive involvement of educated Jews in the Bible-Babel polemic at the start of the twentieth century, which it treats as a typological event.

The last section describes at length various aspects of the key status assigned to the Bible in the new Jewish culture in Europe, and particularly in modern Jewish Palestine, as a “guide to life” in education, culture and politics, as well as part of the attempt to create a new Jewish man, and as a source of inspiration for various creative arts.

Much of the primary research summarized here relates to Cambridge Genizah manuscripts, a thousand-year-old source that testifies to liturgical (as well, of course, as non-liturgical) developments that greatly predate other source material. When the research is concerned with pre-Genizah history, the Genizah evidence is also relevant since the historian of religious ideas must ultimately decide how to date, characterize, and conceptualize its contents and how to explain where they vary significantly from what became, or is regarded (rightly or wrongly) as having become, the standard rabbinic liturgy sanctioned by the Iraqi Jewish authorities from the ninth to the eleventh century.

Die Studie arbeitet die wichtigsten aktuellen Fragen zur frühen Geschichte von Pesach- und Osterfest auf und wirft neues Licht auf die Entwicklung dieser Feste. So zeigt der Autor, dass Exodus 12 einen ätiologischen Hintergrund des Pilgerfestes zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels gibt. Anhand relevanter Texte (Pesach-Haggada, das „Gedicht der vier Nächte” aus der palästinischen Targum-Tradition, Ostervigil) weist die Studie nach, dass das christliche Osterfest als Reaktion auf das jüdische Pesach im 2. Jahrhundert n.Chr. entstanden ist und die Entwicklung des Oster-Sonntags diesem Brauch folgt.

Der Traktat Ketubot ("Eheverträge") bespricht u.a. die schon bei Eheschließung für den Fall der Scheidung oder des Todes des Mannes ausgesetzte Summe, dazu allgemein die Pflichten des Manns und der Frau gegeneinander, den Besitz der Frau, das Erbrecht nach der Frau und die Rechte der Witwe. Der Traktat Nidda ("Unreinheit der Frau") regelt das Verhalten während der Menstruation (vgl. Lev 15,19ff) und nach einer Geburt (Lev 12); weitere Themen sind die Lebensalter der Frau, Pubertät und verschiedene medizinische Fragen.

Der Text ist vokalisiert zur besseren Verständlichkeit und um dem Leser die Möglichkeit zu geben, die Übersetzung zu kontrollieren. Wo Paralleltexte existieren, sind abweichende Lesarten angegeben. Der Schwerpunkt des Werks ist der Kommentar, in welchem der rabbinische Hintergrund, ohne den der Text im Allgemeinen unverständlich ist, im Detail angegeben und belegt wird. Daneben wird überall das Verhältnis des späteren Babylonischen Talmuds zum Jerusalem-Text aufzeigt; dies kann als Grundlage einer Geschichte des rabbinischen Ritualgesetzes angesehen werden.

Das Leben und Werk des Frankfurter Philosophen und christlichen Kabbalisten F. J. Molitor (1779-1860) wird vor dem Hintergrund seiner Auseinandersetzung mit dem Judentum hier zum ersten Mal systematisch entfaltet.

Molitor vertrat die Utopie der christlichen Kabbala, die in der jüdischen Esoterik die ältesten Zeugnisse der göttlichen Offenbarung sucht. Seine mehr als 40 Jahre währende Auseinandersetzung mit der jüdischen Literatur brachte ihm gleichermaßen die Bewunderung der intellektuellen Größen seiner Zeit wie Armut und soziale Isolation. Die Arbeit ordnet den bisher weitgehend vernachlässigten Denker in die deutsche Geistesgeschichte der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein.

In diesem Aufsatzband zeichnen namhafte Fachvertreter der Judaistik in exemplarischen Beiträgen die Entwicklung der jüdischen Religion von der Antike bis zur Moderne nach. Dabei werden auch die Wechselwirkungen mit der antiken und christlichen Umwelt des Judentums ausführlich berücksichtigt.

Der renommierte Wiener Judaist Günter Stemberger wird mit dieser Festschrift aus Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages geehrt.

Dieser zweite Band einer fünfbändigen Ausgabe der dritten Ordnung des Jerusalem Talmud behandelt in Teil I (Soṭah) das Gottesurteil für eine Frau bei Verdacht auf Ehebruch (Num 5) und die Rolle des Hebräischen im jüdischen Ritual. Der zweite Teil (Nedarim) erörtert "Korban" (Darbringung, Opfer) und ähnliche Begriffe, Gelübde und ihre Auswirkungen sowie die Gelübde von Frauen (Num 30).

Jüdischer Glaube, griechische Philosophie und islamisches Denken prägen die Philosophie und Theologie des Maimonides und machen sein Werk zu einem ausgezeichneten Beispiel für den fruchtbaren Kulturtransfer im Mittelalter. Unterschiedliche Aspekte dieser kulturellen Befruchtung über religiöse und ethnische Unterschiede hinweg werden beleuchtet. Dabei stellt sich die auf Gegenwart und Zukunft gerichtete Frage, ob es auch heute noch gelingen könnte, zwischen verschiedenen Religionen, Kulturen und Wissenskonzepten zu vermitteln.

Der Band publiziert die Vorträge, die im Juli 2004 auf dem gleichnamigen internationalen Kongress an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg anlässlich des 800. Todestages Maimonides' gehalten wurden.

Dieser erste Band einer fünfbändigen Ausgabe der dritten Ordnung des Jerusalem Talmud behandelt das jüdische Eherecht und verwandte Themen. Es geht um die Leviratsehe, wobei auch andere jüdische Sekten berücksichtigt werden, ferner um verbotene Ehen und die gerichtliche Behandlung verschollener Ehemänner, um Eheunfähigkeit sowie den Status verheirateter Minderjähriger.

Es ist ein Band pro Jahr geplant.

Der Band enthält Studien zur Entstehung der hebräischen Bibel und zu ihrer Funktion im Rahmen der jüdischen Religion. Behandelt werden auch einzelne biblische Passagen, die meist der Selbstdarstellung und Selbstbehauptung des Judentums dienten. Die zum Teil bereits früher publizierten Aufsätze wurden für diese Ausgabe überarbeitet und bibliographisch auf den neuesten Stand gebracht.

Pluspunkt

• Aufsatzsammlung eines der renommiertesten Judaisten Deutschlands

In den Umwälzungen des 15.-16. Jh. stellte sich für das Judentum und die katholische Kirche die Frage nach der Vereinbarkeit von Tradition und neuer Weltanschauung. Während die katholische Kirche die vertrauten Denkformen zur Aufrechterhaltung ihrer Autorität verteidigte, wurde der Kontrast zwischen der alten und der neuen Welt bei einigen Vertretern der jüdischen Kultur zu einer grundlegenden Moralfrage. Beide fanden in dem Symbol des salomonischen Tempels ein ideales Darstellungsmodell ihrer kulturellen und politischen Vorstellungen.

Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, Parallelen aufzuzeigen und das Umfeld zu rekonstruieren, in dem die Shilte ha-gibborim des Abraham ben David Portaleone entstanden sind.

Der Erstübersetzung von Pirke de-Rabbi Elieser (ca. 9. Jh.) ins Deutsche liegt der Druck Venedig 1544 zugrunde, der die Textgrundlage für den textus receptus (Warschau 1852) mit dem Kommentar von David Luria (1798-1855) ist. Die Streichungen, die für die Edition Warschau 1852 vorgenommen wurden, sind in dem der Übersetzung beigegebenen hebräischen Text markiert. Diese Markierungen veranschaulichen, dass insbesondere Bemerkungen, die von Nichtjuden als polemisch hätten verstanden werden können, in der Edition Warschau 1852 entfernt wurden.

Am Beispiel des Hoheliedkommentars von Moses ibn Tibbon (um 1195 - 1275) wird die Verflechtung von jüdisch-arabischer Philosophie mit der traditionellen Hohelied-Auslegung des Judentums dargestellt.

Durch philologische Analyse der handschriftlichen Überlieferung wird erstmals der authentische Text des Kommentars etabliert. Auf dieser Grundlage werden die wahren Konturen von Moses ibn Tibbons Philosophie sichtbar: Es ist der Versuch einer exoterisch-materialistischen Reinterpretation der esoterisch-metaphysischen Philosophie des Maimonides. Dies intendierte nicht nur eine Demokratisierung des Wissens in der mittelalterlichen jüdischen Gesellschaft, sondern führte Moses ibn Tibbon auch zu einer Sprachphilosophie, die den Erkenntnisakt auf die ästhetische Erfahrung des Lesers gründete.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden ausgewählte Responsa des Rabbi Meir von Rothenburg (um 1200-1293), die sich mit drängenden Rechtsfragen seiner Zeit beschäftigen, übersetzt und untersucht. Dabei werden seine Entscheidungen mit Bezug auf den historischen Kontext bewertet. Die Studie macht die Argumentationsstruktur der behandelten Rechtsgutachten im Rückgriff auf die Traditionsliteratur einsichtig und erschließt die komplizierte Struktur der Texte. Vergleiche mit der Rechtssituation der Umgebungskultur machen Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten deutlich und erlauben Einblicke in das jüdische Alltagsleben.

Dieser Band beschließt die Ausgabe des ersten Teils des Talmud Yerushalmi. Er enthält vier kleine, aber wichtige Texte:

Ma‘aser Šeni zu Regeln des zweiten Zehnten (Deut. 14:22-27) und der Früchte eines neugepflanzten Baumes im vierten Jahr (Lev. 19:24); H.allah zur Anwendung der Regeln der Hebe auf den Anteil des Priesters am Brotteig (Num. 15:17-21); ‘Orlah über Früchte eines Baumes, die möglicherweise in den ersten drei Jahren wachsen (Lev. 19:23) und Bikkurim zu den Regeln für Auswahl und Darbringung der Erstlingsfrüchte.

Ein erster Anhang zeigt die Bedeutung der Tosephta als Bindeglied zwischen galiläischer und babylonischer Tradition - mit deutlicher Bevorzugung babylonischer Positionen. Im zweiten Anhang wird erstmals versucht, die Hauptautoren der Traktate zu identifizieren.

Die Studie untersucht anhand ausgedehnter rabbinischer Zitate den Pluralismus der Halacha in der Zeit vor der Zerstörung des Tempels 70 n. Chr., welcher zu der festgefügten Tradition der Halacha in späterer Zeit in Kontrast steht. Die Tempelzerstörung war - aus politischen Motiven - der Anlaß für diese auffällige Veränderung, die sich in verschiedenen Entwicklungsstufen über einen längeren Zeitraum erstreckte. Der Übergang von der Tannaitischen zur Amoräischen Periode bildete einen folgenreichen Wendepunkt auf dem langen Weg des jüdischen Gesetzes von Flexibilität zur Strenge.

First Order: Zeraïm / Terumot and Ma'serot ist der vierte Band in der Edition des Jerusalemer Talmuds und ein wichtiges Werk der Jüdischen Patristik.

Der Band enthält die grundlegenden Texte über die Hebe der Priester und den Zehnten der Leviten und Armen. Zusätzlich enthält er die wichtigsten Gesundheitsregeln des jüdischen Zeremonialgesetzes, die Regeln jüdischer Solidarität und eine Diskussion der (im babylonischen Talmud diskussionslos akzeptierten) Bedingungen, unter denen ein kleiner Anteil unabsichtlich zugefügter nicht koscherer Lebensmittel vernachlässigt werden kann.

First Order: Zeraïm / Tractates Kilaim and Ševiït ist der dritte Band in der Edition des Jerusalemer Talmuds und ein grundlegendes Werk der Jüdischen Patristik.

Der Band präsentiert grundlegende jüdische Texte aus dem Bereich der Landwirtschaft: verbotene Mischungen von Saaten, Tieren und Geweben (Kilaim) sowie das Verbot landwirtschaftlicher Tätigkeit im Sabbatjahr, in dem auch alle Schulden zu erlassen sind (Ševiït).

Dieser Teil des Jerusalemer Talmuds hat so gut wie keine Entsprechung im Babylonischen Talmud. Ohne seine Kenntnis bleiben die diesbezüglichen Regeln der jüdischen Tradition unverständlich.

First Order: Zeraïm / Tractate Peah and Demay ist der zweite Band in der Edition des Jerusalemer Talmuds und ein grundlegendes Werk der Jüdischen Patristik. Der Band präsentiert grundlegende jüdische Texte zur Organisation von privater und öffentlicher Wohltätigkeit sowie zum Nebeneinander von observanten und nicht-observanten Juden. Dieser Teil des Jerusalemer Talmuds hat so gut wie keine Entsprechung im Babylonischen Talmud. Ohne seine Kenntnis bleiben die diesbezüglichen Regeln der jüdischen Tradition unverständlich.

Der mittelalterliche jüdische Bibelgelehrte Abraham ibn Esra wurde um 1089 in Spanien geboren, wanderte kurz vor 1140 nach Italien aus und zog später nach Frankreich und England weiter. Er starb im Jahre 1164. Das Werk liefert in zwei Teilbänden eine deutschsprachige Edition von Abraham ibn Esras langem, im Jahre 1153 in Frankreich verfaßtem Kommentar zum Buch Exodus auf der Basis der Warschauer-Textausgabe sowie mehrerer Handschriften.

Neben der kritischen, mit ausführlichen Kommentaren versehenen Übersetzung finden sich zu Beginn der Edition zwei umfangreiche Einleitungen: Die erste Einleitung geht u.a. den Fragen nach, ob Abraham ibn Esra der Verfasser des edierten Kommentars ist und wann und wo er ihn verfaßte. Die zweite Einleitung beschäftigt sich mit den von Abraham ibn Esra benutzten Quellen; dadurch wird sie zu einer grundlegenden Einführung in die jüdische Bibelexegese der klassischen Periode überhaupt.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung geht davon aus, daß abstrakte Kategorien
wie die des „reinen Gottesbegriffes", der „Transzendenz Gottes" oder der
„Vermeidung von Anthropomorphismen" von außen an die rabbinischen Texte
herangetragen werden und nicht geeignet sind, diese zu erhellen. Denkformen,
unter denen eine bestimmte Vorstellung zu subsumieren und von denen her
sie zu interpretieren ist, können sich nur aus der rabbinischen Literatur selbst
ergeben. Der Ausgangspunkt der Arbeit war daher die Sammlung und Sichtung
sämtlicher Stellen in der rabbinischen Literatur, in denen die Engel erwähnt
werden.