This book, in many ways the first of its kind, addresses the issue of rituals and their embedded ritual theory, in the religion of ancient Israel. The leading idea of the book is that rituals are a autonomous form of expression of the human mind. The human mind expresses itself in rituals, as it does in language, the arts, and mathematics. Rituals are not performative translations of symbols and ideas, and in religion, of any kind of theology. Theology does not explain how rituals are done and how they accomplish what they claim to do.
The book begins with a general discussion of what...

The perfect Torah is the medium through which the one, unique God makes himself known. The Judaic statement of monotheism comes to expression in Scripture as perfected by the Oral Torah in its native category-formations, Halakhah, norms of behavior, and Aggadah norms of belief. The Halakhah of the oral Torah conveys monotheism in a philosophical mode, and the Aggadah, monotheism in a mythic mode. What is perfect about the dual Torah, written and oral, is the perfect match between the message and the medium, Halakhah for the philosophical monotheism, Aggadah for the mythic statement of...

This detailed, systematic classification of Rabbinic narrative supplies these facts concerning the classification of narratives and their regularities: [1] what are the types and forms of narrative in a given document? [2] how are these distinctive types and forms of narrative distributed across the canonical documents of the formative age, the first six centuries C.E.? The answers for the documentary preferences are in Volumes One through Three, for the Mishnah-Tosefta, the Tannaite Midrash-compilations, and Rabbah-Midrash-compilations, respectively. Volume Four then takes up the types of...

This detailed, systematic classification of Rabbinic narrative supplies these facts concerning the classification of narratives and their regularities: [1] what are the types and forms of narrative in a given document? [2] how are these distinctive types and forms of narrative distributed across the canonical documents of the formative age, the first six centuries C.E.? The answers for the documentary preferences are in Volumes One through Three, for the Mishnah-Tosefta, the Tannaite Midrash-compilations, and Rabbah-Midrash-compilations, respectively. Volume Four then takes up the types of...

This new volume in the Reference Library of Judaism faithfully presents the complete Hebrew text of Rashi's (1040-1105) psalter commentary according to Vienna Heb. ms. 220 together with a fully annotated scientific translation into contemporary idiomatic English. The supercommentary places one of the finest commentaries by the single most influential Hebrew biblical exegete in dialogue with the full gamut of ancient, medieval and modern exegesis. The supercommentary identifies Rashi's sources and pinpoints the exegetical cruces to which Rashi responds, defines the nuances of Rashi's...

History provides one way of marking time. But there are others, and the Judaism of the dual Torah, set forth in the Rabbinic literature from the Mishnah through the Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 200-600 C.E., defines one such alternative. This book tells the story of how a historical way of thinking about past, present, and future, time and eternity, the here and now in relationship to the ages, that is, Scripture's way of thinking gave way to another mode of thought altogether. This other model Neusner calls a paradigm, because a pattern imposed meaning and order on things that happened....

This monograph discusses the disagreement within the Jewish community concerning the medieval practice of active martyrdom, including slaughter of children and suicide, from the 11th until the 16th centuries.
It covers the mainly implicit reservations about and objections in Jewish society to this practice. It is suggested that such opinions existed throughout the period when this practice was accepted in halakhic (legal) terms and by the most outstanding Jurists. It is argued that this was the case during the persecutions of the First Crusade in Germany and in the following centuries in...

The book describes a fascinating encounter between astrology and magic, exposing how Hermetic magic seeped into Jewish literature and Jewish philosophy. Following astral magic in its convoluted course, this original work sheds new light on rationalist Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. Having attained its authority mostly from its use in medical practice, astral magic also developed a theology and provided a key to biblical interpretation. Judah Halevi, Nahmanides, and others explained the meaning and influence of the commandments according to magic-astral models and techniques, generating a...

Between Alexandria and Jerusalem examines the dynamics of Hellenistic and Jewish cultures. It begins by looking at the changes in mentality as reflected in papyri of Roman Egypt, the birth of a qualified audience looking for teachers and preachers and requiring a new culture. This same phenomenon emerged in Rabbinic society. Rabbinic literature was different not only from the Bible, but from Alexandrian exegesis as well. However, Alexandrian exegesis paved the way for rabbinic Midrash. The book defies the understanding of culture as a combination of various petrified 'patterns, '...

This book answers the following question for Judaism: among all the things that happened in antiquity, what are the events that, seen from the perspective of the world that would endure, turn out to shape the long future? How did axiological events identify the focal points of the unfolding religious system, Judaism, in its formulation by the rabbinic sages of ancient times? This is the system that originated, in its own telling, with God's teaching to Moses at Sinai in the Torah, in written and traditional form. Of all that happened to the Jews in the millennium from the formation of the...