Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Sacred Writings

A National Jewish Book Award Finalist

The haftarot are an ancient part of Hebrew liturgy. These supplemental readings are excerpted from the Prophets (Nevi'im) and accompany each weekly Sabbath reading from the Torah as well as readings for special Sabbaths and festivals. Noted Bible scholar Michael Fishbane introduces each haftarah with an outline and discussion of how that passage conveys its meaning, and he follows it with observations on how it relates to the Torah portion or special occasion. Individual comments, citing classical rabbinic as well as modern commentators,...

Recipient of the Prize of the Minister of Science, Culture, and Sport of the State of Israel] for classical literature for the year 5762 2001].

The commentary, which accompanies the Hebrew biblical text and the JPS translation, approaches the Book of Esther from a fresh literary point of view. It includes essays entitled When and Where Was the Book of Esther Written?, Sex and Spies, and Rabbinic Interpretation.

The JPS classic reissue of a Jewish masterpiece, reset in two volumes with all new indexes To this day Legends of the Jews remains a most remarkable and comprehensive compilation of stories connected to the Hebrew Bible. It is an indispensable reference on that body of literature known as Midrash, the imaginative retelling and elaboration on Bible stories in which mythological tales about demons and magic co-exist with moralistic stories about the piety of the patriarchs. Legends is the first book to which one turns to learn about the postbiblical understanding of a biblical episode, or to...

Master Bible scholar and teacher Marc Brettler argues that today s contemporary readers can only understand the ancient Hebrew Scripture by knowing more about the culture that produced it. And so Brettler unpacks the literary conventions, ideological assumptions, and historical conditions that inform the biblical text and demonstrates how modern critical scholarship and archaeological discoveries shed light on this fascinating and complex literature.

Brettler surveys representative biblical texts from different genres to illustrate how modern scholars have taught us to read these...

A timeless collection of midrash never before available in English.

The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is a collection of classical midrashic interpretation of the biblical Book of Exodus. Lost for centuries, the text was reconstructed and recovered in the 19th and 20th centuries by both German and Israeli scholars from a variety of source materials, including medieval manuscripts of the text and midrashic anthologies. As one of the first collections of rabbinic biblical interpretation, the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is an indispensable source for understanding...

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: The Friedman French Foundation.

First published 500 years ago as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as the Miqra'ot Gedolot have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.

Each page of The Commentators' Bible contains several Hebrew verses from...

Joshua Jacobson s 2002 edition the comprehensive 1000-page guide to cantillation is now available in this condensed, 300-page, user-friendly paperback edition. It is an ideal instructional guide for adult and young-adult students of Torah, for b nai mitzvah students, and for cantors, rabbis, and Jewish educators of all denominations.

Like the original edition, it includes an explanation of the tradition and a description of the practice of chanting, with all its regional variations and grammatical rules. There is detailed instruction, with musical notation, on chanting of Torah, and...

This rich collection celebrates 23 biblical women, from the familiar Sarah, Miriam, Ruth, and Esther, to the more mysterious Hatzlelponi mother of Samson) and the unnamed "Wife of Ovadiah." Based on the 13th-century Yemenite Midrash ha-Gadol (literally, the Great Midrash)--a work only partially translated into English and, until now, virtually unknown to American Jews--this new volume presents stories, commentaries, original monologues, and discussion topics touching upon the lives of Jewish women today.

Penina Adelman became captivated by Midrash ha-Gadol while seeking a new...

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: Kinney Zalesne and Scott Siff.

Every commentator, from the classical rabbi to the modern-day scholar, has brought his or her own worldview, with all of its assumptions, to bear on the reading of holy text. This relationship between the text itself and the reader's interpretation is the subject of Torah Through Time.

Shai Cherry traces the development of Jewish Bible commentary through three pivotal periods in Jewish history: the rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods. The result is a fascinating and...

The "Lost Gospels" refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, both discovered in the 1940s. The Nag Hammadi Library consists of writings found by two peasants who unearthed clay jars in 1945 in upper Egypt. These did not appear in English for 32 years, because the right to publish was contended by scholars, politicians, and antique dealers. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in clay jars in Palestine by a goatherder in 1947, weathered similar storms. The first team of analysts were mostly Christian clergy, who weren't anxious to share material that frightened church leaders....