- Beyond the Synagogue Gallery
- Karla Goldman
- 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
- Catalog of the Bernice and Henry Tumen Collection of Jewish Ceremonial Objects in the Harvard College Library and the Harvard Semitic Museum
- Compiled by Violet Gilboa
- 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
- Diaspora
- Erich S. Gruen
- 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
- Harvard Judaica
- Charles Berlin
- 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
- Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939
- Daniel Soyer
- 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
- Judeophobia
- Peter Schäfer
- 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
- Moses the Egyptian
- Jan Assmann
- 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
- Prayers that Cite Scripture
- Edited by James L. Kugel
- 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
- The Sabbatean Prophets
- Matt Goldish
- 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
- Karel van der Toorn
- 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
- Vanishing Diaspora
- Bernard Wasserstein
- 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