This collection of short case studies considers the issue of normatively in Judaism and Jewish identity. The questions of how and why certain aspects of Jewish life and thought come to be regarded as authoritative or normative, rather than inauthentic or marginal, have been and continue to be contentious ones. Topics include the philosopher Moses Maimonides, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, the self-perception of communal leadership in Manchester during the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, sermons of Jewish Reform rabbis during the Second World War, Orthodox rabbinic debate about war in...

Darwin provoked Jewish as well as Christian thinkers so that many felt obliged to establish oppositional, alternative, synthetic, or complimentary models relating Jewish religion to his theory of natural selection. This book examines a range of leading nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American progressive Jewish thinkers, with the primary focus being rabbis Kohler, Wise, Hirsch, Krauskopf, and Hahn, although many others are covered. Key themes include the widespread commitment to universal evolutionism, that is, the application of biological evolutionary theory to other realms (e.g....

Melilah is an interdisciplinary peer-review journal concerned with Jewish law, history, literature, religion, culture and thought in the ancient, medieval and modern eras. Contributors (2010) include Simon Mayers, Z. Yaakov Wise, Ed Kessler, Hyam Maccoby, and Glenda Abramson.

Melilah is an interdisciplinary electronic journal concerned with Jewish law, history, literature, religion, culture and thought in the ancient, medieval and modern eras.

Melilah is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal concerned with Jewish law, history, literature, religion, culture and thought in the ancient, medieval and modern eras. Contributors (2009) include Cynthia Crewe (abstract only), Dvir Abramovich, Phillip Mendes, and Elliot Cohen.

Melilah is an interdisciplinary electronic journal concerned with Jewish law, history, literature, religion, culture and thought in the ancient, medieval and modern eras.

Melilah is an interdisciplinary electronic journal concerned with Jewish law, history, literature, religion, culture and thought in the ancient, medieval and modern eras.