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Sicker presents a personal attempt to come to grips with the awesome question, Where was God at Auschwitz? and with it some of the related central issues of Jewish thought and belief. There is a tendency among many writers of contemporary work of theology to argue that the very fact of the Holocaust invalidates traditional Jewish theory and that its long-held ideas about God must therefore be revised radically. However, Jewish thinkers have long asked the equivalent of this troubling question, albeit in reference to other places and times in Israel's history and have offered possible...

Rabbinic political thinking has a long and comparatively well documented history extending back to the biblical constitution in Deuteronomy. Though rabbinic political theory conventionally remains unrecognized by political scientists, the rise of religiously-based power in Israel demonstrates the effects of such theory when used to guide policy. In providing a rare systematic study of rabbinic political thinking -- as well as a basis for study of how its underlying theory might apply to contemporary political areanas -- "The Judaic State" proves to be valuable material to scholars of...

Written for students of Middle Eastern politics and other readers who seek to understand why a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict still seems so remote, this book examines how the question of physical security has constituted the most fundamental concern of Israel since the country came into being in 1948. The author's immediate purpose is to provide the reader with the necessary background to understand why Israel has proved reluctant to agree to the numerous peace plans and processes proposed over the years, demonstrating that--at least from the predominant Israeli perspective--each...

Sicker examines the fundamental norms of civic conduct considered essential to the emergence and moral viability of the good society envisioned in the source documents and traditions of Judaism. The principles underlying the desired behavioral norms constitute the ethical underpinnings of the unique civilization envisioned by Mosaic teaching, a Judaic civilization characterized by instituted norms of civil conduct deemed necessary to ensure appropriate civil relations between persons, individually and collectively.The tensions in Judaic thought regarding the concept of democracy as a...

Approaching the biblical creation narrative...

The central concern of Moses, as reflected in these discourses, is with the challenge of nation building, creating an Israelite nation out of a melange of ethnically related tribes and clans that were just liberated from centuries of subjugation and servitude in a relatively sophisticated pagan environment. That...

Many people have heard the term Talmud but have little or no idea what it is, what it contains, and why it was written; moreover, few have ever actually looked into one of its works, and even fewer would make any sense of it if they did. Here, Sicker provides readers with insight into the nature and history of Judaic thought and its literature through illustrative examples and clear explanations. Rabbinic literature is important, even to those who are not religiously inclined, because it alone represents the embodiment of the intellectual legacy that has contributed enormously to the...