Bücher der Reihe Judaism and Jewish Life

Development, Learning, and Community uses data drawn from a study of pluralistic Jewish high schools to illustrate the complex and often challenging interplay between the cognitive and socio-affective elements of education.

Examines the whole complex of relations between the Land of Israel, the Jewish Torah and the People of Israel from the Pre-Zionist Period until the Establishment of the State of Israel. It examines the dynamics of those relations through the modernisation of Jewish society, and the problem of Jewish Identity vis-a-vis modernity.

The Jewish intellectual tradition has a long and complex history that has resulted in significant and influential works of scholarship. This book suggests that there is a series of common principles that can be extracted from the Jewish intellectual tradition that have broad, even life-changing, implications for individual and societal achievement.

Examines the role that Jewish cultural tradition played in the work of the Russian psychologist Lev.S.Vygotsky and the British sociologist Basil Bernstein by highlighting aspects of their respective lives and theories revealing significant influences of Jewish thoughts and beliefs.

British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - now Baron Sacks of Aldgate in the City of London - launched his tenure of office in 1991 with the aim of an inclusivist Decade of Jewish Renewal. Within a few years, fulfilling his installation prediction that 'I will have failures, but I will try again, another way, another time,' he was attracting calls, from opponents and supporters, for his resignation and the abolition of his office. Reviewing Sacks' early writings and pronouncements on the theme of inclusivism, Another Way, Another Time demonstrates how, repeatedly, the Chief Rabbi said 'irreconcilable things to different audiences' and how, in the process, he induced his kingmaker and foremost patron, Lord (Stanley) Kalms, to declare of Anglo-Jewry: 'We are in a time warp, and fast becoming an irrelevance in terms of world Jewry.' Citing support from a variety of sources, this study contends that the Chief Rabbinate has indeed reached the end of the road and explores other paths to the leadership of a pluralistic - and, ideally, inclusivist - community.

Jewish custom and ritual, or their Hebrew equivalent, minhag, has intrigued rabbis and scholars for generations. The majority of the rabbinical works devoted to minhag primarily encompass lists of sources and reporting of old and new customs. Some have explored the historical development of the minhag. Here, Simcha Fishbane treats minhag from a socio-anthropological perspective. The Shtiebelization of Modern Jewry discusses the theory and model of minhagim using the Mishnah Berurah and the Arukh Hashulkhan, analyzes rabbinic texts concerned with custom, and describes current rituals from a socio-anthropological viewpoint, enabling both scholars and general readers to come to a better understanding of minhagim in Jewish culture.

Shows that in its generative theology, Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age invoked the perpetual presence of God overseeing all that Israelites said and did. This title states that it conceived of Israel to transcend the movement of history and to live in a perpetual present tense, and that Israel located itself in a Land like no other.

The Hayei Adam, an abridged code of Jewish law, was written by Rabbi Avraham Danzig (1748-1820) and was first published in 1810. This code spread quickly throughout Europe, and the demand for it required a second publishing which the author printed in 1818. Beyond a Code of Jewish Law attempts to understand the implicit message of its author and discuss various approaches of its writer to both Judaism and Jewish law. While the Hayei Adam without any doubt unveils Rabbi Danzig to be a brilliant rabbinic scholar, with a comprehensive knowledge of Jewish law as well as a coherent and concise system of presentation, it also expresses his great concern for the Jewish community and each individual Jew. Aspects of this concern such as Hasidism, musar, kabbalah, are explored.

This book explores the various rationales offered by Jewish groups in late antiquity for the authority of the Divine Law. While Second Temple groups tended to look towards philosophy or metaphysics to justify the Divine Law's authority, the tannaim formulated legal arguments. These arguments link to a set of issues regarding the tannaim's conception of Divine Law and of Israel's election.