- Beyond the Synagogue Gallery
- Focusing on the nineteenth century, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery recounts the emergence of new roles for American Jewish women in public worship and synagogue life. Karla Goldman's study of changing patterns of female religiosity is a story of acculturation--of adjustments made to fit Jewish worship into American society. This account of the evolving religious identity of American Jewish women expands our understanding of women's religious roles and of the Americanization of Judaism in the nineteenth century.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
- A Biblical Translation in the Making
In his youth, R. Saadia Gaon (882–942 CE) dreamed of publishing a proper translation of the Torah for Arabic-speaking Jews, to replace the overly literal ones in vogue at the time. His dream was fulfilled with the issuing of the Tafsir, the most important Jewish Bible translation of the Middle Ages. In this monograph, Richard C. Steiner traces the history of the Tafsir—its roots, its modest beginnings, and its subsequent evolution.
- Hardcover 2010
- Catalog of the Bernice and Henry Tumen Collection of Jewish Ceremonial Objects in the Harvard College Library and the Harvard Semitic Museum
- This volume features photographic reproductions of 166 Jewish ceremonial objects including wine cups; beakers; Sabbath lamps; candlesticks; spice boxes; Hanukkah lamps; Torah pointers; crowns, shields, and finials; plates for the Passover Seder and other occasions; charity boxes; Esther scrolls; containers for the etrog fruit used on Sukkot; marriage rings; amulets; and others.
- Paperback 2005
- Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis
- Hardcover 1985
- Congregations in America
- This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most significant form of collective religious expression in American society: local congregations. Among its more surprising findings, the book reveals that, despite the media focus on the political and social activities of religious groups, the arts are actually far more central to the workings of congregations.
- Hardcover 2004
- Creativity and Tradition
- This volume brings together sixteen of Ta-Shma's outstanding studies originally written in English, four of which are published here for the first time. Set in Germany, northern France, Italy, Poland, and Spain, these essays focus on leading rabbinic scholars and their writings, as well as important issues of Jewish intellectual history, such as the nature of halakhah and aggadah, kabbalah and spirituality, childhood, and popular religion.
- Hardcover 2007
- Decoding the Rabbis
- Hardcover 1980
- Diaspora
- What was life like for Jews settled throughout the Mediterranean world of Classical antiquity--and what place did Jewish communities have in the diverse civilization dominated by Greeks and Romans? In a probing account of the Jewish diaspora in the four centuries from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple, Gruen reaches often surprising conclusions.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2004
- Falaquera's Epistle of the Debate
- Hardcover 1988 / Paperback
- Gershom Scholem
- Paperback
- Harvard Judaica
- Harvard's Judaica Collection is one of the world's great Judaica collections, and is the largest collection of Israeli and Israel-related publications outside of Israel. This book traces the history of the collection from Harvard's founding, with special emphasis on the accelerated growth in the past four decades.
- Hardcover 2005
- Hasidism
- Hardcover 1988 / Paperback
- Idolatry
- "You shall have no other gods besides Me." This injunction, handed down through Moses three thousand years ago, marks one of the most decisive shifts in Western culture: away from polytheism toward monotheism. Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G. E. Moore, this brilliant account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities. Its insights into pluralism and intolerance, into the logic and illogic of the arguments religions aim at each other, make Idolatry especially timely and valuable in these days of dark and implacable religious difference.
- Paperback 1998 / Hardcover
- Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939
- How did the vast number of Jewish immigrants from different regions of Eastern Europe form their American ethnic identity? In his answer to this question, Daniel Soyer examines how Jewish immigrant hometown associations (landsmanshaftn) transformed old-world communal ties into vehicles for integration into American society.
- Hardcover 1997
- Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution
- Between 1917 and 1921, as revolution convulsed Russia, Jewish intellectuals and writers across the crumbling empire threw themselves into the pursuit of a “Jewish renaissance.” Here is a brilliant, revisionist argument about the nature of cultural nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and socialism as ideological systems, and culture itself, the axis around which the encounter between Jews and European modernity has pivoted over the past century.
- Hardcover 2009
- Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century
- Hardcover 1987 / Paperback
- Jewish and Islamic Law
- Gideon Libson's highly original work on custom is the first attempt to present a comprehensive comparative study of Jewish-Islamic law on a particular topic during the early Middle Ages. His in-depth study of Islamic law--its sources, legal schools, and extensive legal literature--together with his expertise in the wide range of geonic and rabbinic literature enable him to determine the influence of Muslim practice on geonic custom.
- Hardcover 2003
- Judeophobia
- Taking a fresh look at what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews and Judaism, Peter Schäfer locates the origin of anti-Semitism in the ancient world and firmly establishes Hellenistic Egypt as the generating source of anti-Semitism, with roots extending back into Egypt's pre-Hellenistic history.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998
- The Limits of Enlightenment
- This book explores the early Jewish confrontation with modernity and its attendant cultural and religious challenges. Focusing on the burgeoning eighteenth-century interest in the study of Scripture, Edward Breuer examines the complex relationship between the Jewish Enlightenment and the German Aufklärung.
- Paperback / Hardcover
- Love and Joy
- This first single-volume collection of the pivotal writings of this great religious humanist includes his studies of love and joy as metaphors, the laws of war in ancient Israel, the figurative nature of legal language, the role of the prophet and prophetic speech, and the expressions of belonging which united a culture.
- Paperback / Hardcover
- Making Americans
- This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical. Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II and encounter new interpretations of classics such as The Jazz Singer, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I. We see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power.
- Hardcover 2004
- Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara
- An eminent authority on the Talmud offers here an analysis of classical rabbinic texts that illuminates the nature of Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara, and highlights a fundamental characteristic of Jewish law. Halivini chronicles the persistence of justificatory Midrash, the culmination of its development in Gemara in the fifth and sixth centuries, and its continuation down through the ages.
- Hardcover 1986
- Moses the Egyptian
- Standing at the very foundation of monotheism, and so of Western culture, Moses is a figure not of history, but of memory. As such, he is the quintessential subject for the innovative historiography that Jan Assmann both defines and practices in this work. It is a study of the ways in which factual and fictional events and characters are stored in religious beliefs and transformed in their philosophical justification, literary reinterpretation, philological restitution (or falsification), and psychoanalytic demystification.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998
- Parables in Midrash
- David Stern shows how the parable or mashal--the most distinctive type of narrative in midrash--was composed, how its symbolism works, and how it serves to convey the ideological convictions of the rabbis. He describes its relation to similar tales in other literatures, including the parables of Jesus in the New Testament and kabbalistic parables. Through its innovative approach to midrash, this study reaches beyond its particular subject, and will appeal to all readers interested in narrative and religion.
- Hardcover 1991 / Paperback
- People of the Book
- Halbertal provides a panoramic survey of Jewish attitudes toward Scripture, provocatively organized around problems of normative and formative authority, with an emphasis on the changing status and functions of Mishnah, Talmud, and Kabbalah.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1997
- Prayers that Cite Scripture
- In the beginning, prayers were straightforward: people turned to God and asked for help. By the closing centuries of the biblical period, however, prayers began to include references to Scripture. This process grew in intensity and refinement as Judaism moved from the biblical period to early post-biblical times. This collection of essays seeks to chart the main lines of the Scripturalization of prayer over this entire period.
- Hardcover 2006
- Rabad of Posquiers
- Rabad of Posquières--Rabbi Abraham ben David--was one of the most creative Talmudic scholars of this period. This biographical treatise on Rabad captures his personality, chronicles his role in the intellectual history of the Jews in southern France during the twelfth century, and outlines his influence on subsequent generations.
- Hardcover 1962
- Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra
- Paperback / Hardcover
- The Sabbatean Prophets
- The story of Shabbatai and his prophets has mainly been explored by specialists in Jewish mysticism. Goldish shifts the focus of Sabbatean studies from the theology of Lurianic Kabbalah to the widespread seventeenth-century belief in latter-day prophecy. By placing Sabbateanism in a broad cultural context, Goldish integrates this Jewish messianic movement into the early modern world, making its story accessible to scholars and students alike.
- Hardcover 2004
- Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
- The scribes of ancient Israel are indeed the main figures behind the Hebrew Bible, and this book tells their story for the first time. Drawing comparisons with the scribal practices of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, van der Toorn details the methods, assumptions, and material means that gave rise to biblical texts. Traditionally seen as the copycats of antiquity, the scribes emerge here as the literate elite who held the key to the production and the transmission of texts.
- Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2009
- Studies in Maimonides
- Paperback 1992 / Hardcover 1992
- Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, Volume I,
- Hardcover 1979
- Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, Volume III,
- This volume contains eleven original studies, ten in English and one in Hebrew, by some of the most established scholars of Judaica and young newcomers as well. Like the studies in the previous two volumes in the series, those in this new volume shed important light on the Jewish cultural experience across a vast geographic expanse, and over many centuries.
- Paperback 2001 / Hardcover 2001
- Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Volume 1,
- Hardcover 1973
- Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Volume 2,
- Hardcover 1977
- Vanishing Diaspora
- In this first comprehensive social and political history of the experience and fate of European Jews during the last fifty years, Bernard Wasserstein warns of their disappearance as a population group, cultural identity, and significant force in European society.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997