Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University

Katz transformed our understanding of Jewish–Christian relations in the Middle Ages, the social-historical significance of Jewish law, the rise of Orthodoxy in Germany and Hungary, and the emergence of modern anti-Semitism. Here ten scholars discuss his work and its importance in reshaping the way Jewish history is studied.

In this intimate memoir of a young Jewish woman’s adolescence and life in a nineteenth century Eastern European shtetl, Hinde Bergner recalls the gradual impact of modernization on a traditional world as she finds herself caught between her thirst for a European education, true love, and the expectations of her traditional family.

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.

This volume brings together 16 of Ta-Shma’s outstanding studies (4 published here for the first time). 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.

Moses Maimonides was the most significant Jewish thinker, jurist, and doctor of the Middle Ages, author of both a monumental code of Jewish law and the most influential and controversial work of Jewish philosophy. These essays mark the 800th anniversary of Maimonides’s death in 1204, covering all aspects of his work and influence.

Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.

The Tafsīr, a new translation of the Torah made by R. Saadia Gaon (882–942 C.E.) for Arabic-speaking Jews, was the most important Jewish Bible translation of the Middle Ages. Richard Steiner traces the Tafsīr’s history—its ancient and medieval roots, modest beginnings, subsequent evolution, and profound impact on the history of biblical exegesis.