The story of Hillel, frozen near-to-death on the snowy roof of the Study Hall, is well-known. In its details, however, the story is impossible. No one could lay under three cubits of snow overnight and live. And Jerusalem never receives three cubits of snow-certainly not on the night of the winter solstice, as recounted in the Babylonian Talmud five centuries after Hillel's birth. Louis Rieser set out to find the real meaning of the legends of Hillel. What is the Talmud trying to teach us about rabbis, about leadership, about important values? This provocative book argues that while the...
The story of Hillel, frozen near-to-death on the snowy roof of the Study Hall, is well-known. In its details, however, the story is impossible. No one...
The Jewish religion owns a virtually uninterrupted record of scripture and commentary dating back to 1,000 B.C.E. (B.C.), portions of which allow the new book Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli to document attitudes toward disabled people in the earliest centuries of this ancient culture. Abrams examines the Tanach, the Hebrew acronym for the Jewish Bible, including passages from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, and subsequent commentaries up to and through the Bavli, the Talmud of Babylonia written between the 5th and 7th centuries...
The Jewish religion owns a virtually uninterrupted record of scripture and commentary dating back to 1,000 B.C.E. (B.C.), portions of which allow the ...