Focusing on the concepts of time and the life cycle, this collection of articles examines Jewish life in the Talmudic period through the lens of Jewish law and custom of the time. The essays are the work of Nissan Rubin (one of them written in collaboration with Admiel Kosman) and come together to present the cultural perspective of the sages and scholars who produced the stepping-stones of Jewish life and custom. By using a structural approach, Rubin is able to identify processes of long-term change in a society that remains largely traditional and stable. Symbolic analysis supplies an...

The Wisdom of Love strives to challenge the discrepancy between the way source texts relate to love and the way they are perceived to do so, introducing readers to the extensive, profound, and significant treatment of love in the Jewish canon. This is a book about love, not its repression; it is an opportunity to study the wisdom of love, not those who lack such wisdom and are unlikely to ever acquire it. The Wisdom of Love brings about not only a change in perception--recognizing the existence of the wisdom of love per se--but also the realization that this wisdom is the very foundation of...