The Deep Humanity of Jewish Law
Zalman Rothschild on Moshe Halbertal Jewish law considers the topic of doubt worthy of occupying an entire category of law unto itself, and
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Rabbinic and Late Antique Jewish History
Problems of Poverty and the Recently Impoverished – By John Mandsager
John Mandsager on Gregg Gardner’s The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism According to Suetonius (Lives of the Twelve Caesars, II.91), once
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Out of This World: Virtual Reality and Philosophical Talmud – By Zachary Braiterman
Zachary Braiterman on Sergey Dolgopolski’s The Open Past As a “religious” document, the Babylonian Talmud is as strange as it gets. A web
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Here, There, and Everywhere – By Amit Gvaryahu
Amit Gvaryahu on on Richard Kalmin’s Migrating Tales When ISIS recently took over the historic city of Palmyra on the Silk Road, they
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The Talmud and the Desert Fathers – By Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin on Michal Bar-Asher Siegal’s Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud The study of the Babylonian Talmud is right now a hot
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A Sociolinguistic History of the Jews – By Sarah Bunin Benor
Sarah Bunin Benor on Bernard Spolsky’s The Languages of the Jews Intellectual history. Political history. Cultural history. Economic history. There are so many lenses through
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Not Like the Egyptians – By Jonathan Boyarin
Jonathan Boyarin on Beth A. Berkowitz’s Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present Trigger warning: devotees of popular Kabbalah and Judaism may be distressed
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“Beneficent Incision”: Midrash and the Contemporary Critical Moment – By Adam Zachary Newton
Adam Zachary Newton on Dina Stein’s Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self In a deeply learned set of essays collected under the title
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Feasting Eyes and Scopic Torah – By Eva Kiesele
Eva Kiesele on Rachel Neis’s The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture Rachel Neis’s The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing
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How We Choose to Write History
David Nirenberg responds to the Forum on Anti-Judaism We know that “books, too, have their fates,” but all too seldom is that fate
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