The renewed and growing interest in ethical wills today speaks to the attraction they have to people who want to reflect on the deeper meaning of their own lives and share what they have learned with those they love. These very personal documents, with origins in the Bible, grew into a particularly Jewish custom.
Hebrew Ethical Wills can teach us much about the past and gives us food for thought for the present. First published in 1926, this expanded edition includes new material: Lawrence Fine s excellent introduction, passages from the autobiography of Gluckl of Hameln (to give...

We find that the story of Abraham and Isaac rises almost spontaneously in the mind of one generation after another.... Constantly past and present react to and upon each other, and life is given an order, a coherence, by the themes which govern the Holy Scriptures and the reinterpretations of those themes.
from the Introduction by Judah Goldin

Shalom Spiegel s classic examines the total body of texts, legends, and traditions referring to the Binding of Isaac and weaves them together into a definitive study of the Akedah as one of the central events in all of human...