The death penalty in classical Judaism has been a highly politicized subject in modern scholarship. Those wishing to defend the Talmud from Enlightenment attacks on its legitimacy pointed to Talmudic criminal law as evidence for its elevated, progressive morals. But even more pressing was the need to prove the Jews' innocence of the charge of being Christ-killers. This charge hinged on the reconstruction of the ancient Jewish death penalty. The Gospels show a corrupt Jewish court as responsible...
This volume drawn from Ein Yaakov presents a translation and commentary of the aggados found in Tractate Megillah. The story of Esther and the Purim festival are featured.
Koren Talmud Bavli, Noe Color Edition, Complete Set (42 Volumes, 4 Cases)
by Adin Steinsaltz
The Concept of >Ruach Ra'ah< in Contemporary Rabbinic Responsa (1945-2000) (Studia Judaica)
by Leon Mock
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 th...
Comprised of debates among the rabbis of late antiquity in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.), the Talmud has provided the basis for Jewish ethical and practical norms for centuries. It is also an extremely long and forbiddingly difficult work that has accumulated countless commentaries just as complex over the ages. A recent translation with extensive notes has made it more accessible to English-language readers, but the textual difficulties remain. This volume look...
The Reader's Guide to the Talmud (Brill Reference Library of Judaism, #5)
by Jacob Neusner
This systematic introduction to the Talmud of Babylonia (Bavli) answers basic questions of form: how is this a coherent document? How do we make sense of the several languages in which it is written? What are the principal parts of the complex writing? Turning to questions of modes of thought, the account proceeds to address the intellectual character of the Bavli and in particular the character and uses of its dialectics. Finally, questions of substance come to the fore: how does the Talmud rel...
Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah
by Adjunct Lecturer Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Scriptures of the Oral Torah