The Talmud is one of the most significant religious texts in the world, second only to the Bible in its importance to Judaism. As the Bible is the word of God, The Talmud applies that word to the lives of its followers. In a range of styles including commentary, parables, proverbs and anecdotes, it provides guidance on all aspects of everyday life from ownership to commerce to relationships. This selection of its most illuminating passages makes accessible the centuries of Jewish thought within...
Wherever Jews have settled and whatever languages they spoke, they created a community with a single set of common values. One law, one theology defined the community throughout their many migrations. A single book explains how this came about-the Talmud. Renowned scholar Jacob Neusner introduces readers to the Talmud, defining it, explaining its historical context, and illustrating why it remains relevant today.
Raises the contemporary issue of intertextuality, while analyzing the canonical writings of Judaism. These writings provide an ideal example of the meaning and uses of the critical initiative represented by intertextuality. In this book, the author asks in reference to these texts, how one document relates to others, thus a community of texts. He agrees that the shared conventions of rhetoric, topic and logic validate an approach to the canonical texts that ignores all social dimensions, for int...
In his personal meditation on the relationship between the ancient, continuing tradition of the Talmud and the expanding world of the Internet Jonathan Rosen blends memoir, history and literary reflection. In the loose, associative logic and the vastness of each, he discovers not merely the disruption of a broken world but a kind of disjointed harmony. In the same way that the Talmud helped Jews survive after the destruction of the Temple by making Jewish culture portable and personal, the all-i...
Seder Nezikin. Vol. II (b) (Artscroll Mishnah)
by Avrohom Yoseif Rosenberg and Gavriel Finkel
Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah
by Professor of Religion Jacob Neusner
Why Is America Different?
Does the American Jewish experience represent a singular communal circumstance, or does it repeat, with obvious and unavoidable variation, the older European pattern of Jewish existence? In 2004, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the establishment of the American Jewish community, this question seemed well worth revisiting. To explore it more fully, the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University brought together a distinguished group of expert scholars on the main areas...
The Talmud chronicles the early development of rabbinic Judaism through the writings and commentaries of the rabbis whose teachings form its foundation. However, this key religious text is expansive, consisting of 63 books containing extensive discussions and interpretations of the Mishnah accumulated over several centuries. Sifting through the huge number of names mentioned in the Talmud to find information about one figure can be tedious and time-consuming, and most reference guides either pro...
A book that challenges our most basic assumptions about Judeo-Christian monotheism Contrary to popular belief, Judaism was not always strictly monotheistic. Two Gods in Heaven reveals the long and little-known history of a second, junior god in Judaism, showing how this idea was embraced by rabbis and Jewish mystics in the early centuries of the common era and casting Judaism's relationship with Christianity in an entirely different light. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of ancient sources tha...
Studies in the Evolution and Formation of the Passover Haggadah (Judaism in Context, #27)
by Jay Rovner
The Passover Haggadah, the quintessential Jewish book, began taking shape in the period of the Mishnah and the Talmud (ca. 100-600 CE). Even by 600, it did not look like it does today. Major portions were wanting, e.g., the story of eminent sages at a seder in Bene Beraq; the typology of the four sons; the midrashic expansion of the story of the exodus; the song Dayyenu. Those compositions (mostly) or borrowings were incorporated into the Haggadah between ca. 600-900 (the Geonic period). Such se...
Abraham as Spiritual Ancestor (Biblical Interpretation, #100)
by I Kamudzandu and Israel Kamudzandu
New Testament commentaries and exegetes have not paid sufficient attention to the context in which Paul's Epistel to the Romans was crafted. This book written from an African perspective offers a fresh interpretation on a contextualizing reading of Romans and its theology. The argument of the book is that Paul's construcntion of Abraham as a Spiritual ancestor of "all" faith people was based on his encounter with the Roman Ideology based on Aeneas as the founder of Rome. A juxtaposition of these...
Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics
by Leonard Kravitz
Taste of Text, A: An Introduction to Talmud and Midrash
by Rabbi Ronald H Isaacs
The development and methodology of the Talmud along with the fascinating story of its transmission from Babylonian times to today. Illustrated with photographs.
Talmuda de-Eretz Israel (Studia Judaica)
Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine brings together an international community of historians, literature scholars and archaeologists to explorehow 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 th...
The Babylonian Talmud