Studies in Ancient Midrash is the proceedings of a conference, held at Harvard University, surveying the beginnings of ancient biblical interpretation. 
 Essays include "Ancient Biblical Interpretation and the Biblical Sage," by James Kugel; "Literacy and the Polemics Surrounding Biblical Interpretation," by A. I. Baumgarten; "Garments of Skin, Garments of Glory," by Gary Anderson; "Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead," by Menahem Kister; "Contours of Genesis Interpretation at Qumran," by Moshe Bernstein; "Qohelet's Reception and Interpretation," by Marc Hirshman; "Law, Morality and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus," by Menahem Kister; and "Biblical Interpretation in Some Qumran Prayers and Hymns," by James Kugel.

Studies in Ancient Midrash

Politics & Social Sciences

Kugel, James L.

Social Sciences

Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies

This volume contains eleven original studies, ten in English and one in Hebrew, by some of the most established scholars of Judaica and young newcomers as well. Like the studies in the previous two volumes in the series, those in this new volume shed important light on the Jewish cultural experience across a vast geographic expanse, and over many centuries. The studies illuminate the relationship of Jewish social structure and intellectual creativity; the political theories that informed Jewish communal life; different aspects of Jewish philosophical and mystical discourse; Jewish biblical interpretation; and the dynamic of Jewish legal thinking. One study offers a critical edition and annotated translation of one of the classics of Jewish biblical interpretation. The collection will be indispensable to all students of Jewish history and culture.

Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, Volume III (HARVARD JUDAIC MONOGRAPHS)

History

Europe

Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (Harvard Judaic Monographs) (Volume III)

The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work

Jacob Katz (1904-1998) was one of the greatest Jewish historians of the twentieth century. A pioneer of new foci and methods, Katz brought extraordinary insights to many aspects of Jewish life and its surrounding contexts. 
 With a keen eye for both "forests" and "trees," Katz transformed our understanding of many areas of Jewish history, among them: Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages, the social-historical significance of Jewish law, the rise of Orthodoxy in Germany and Hungary, and the emergence of modern antisemitism. In this volume, ten leading scholars critically discuss Katz's work with an appreciation for Katz's importance in reshaping the way Jewish history is studied.

The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Harvard Center for Jewish Studies)

Religion & Spirituality

Jacob Katz (1904-1998) was one of the greatest Jewish historians of the twentieth century. A pioneer of new foci and methods, Katz brought extraordinary insights to many aspects of Jewish life and its surrounding contexts.  With a keen eye for both "forests" and "trees," Katz transformed our understanding of many areas of Jewish history, among them: Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages, the social-historical significance of Jewish law, the rise of Orthodoxy in Germany and Hungary, and the emergence of modern antisemitism. In this volume, ten leading scholars critically discuss Katz's work with an appreciation for Katz's importance in reshaping the way Jewish history is studied.

Professor Isadore Twersky was one of the giants of the field of Jewish Studies. Among his many accomplishments was the supervision of over thirty-five dissertations in Jewish Studies, ranging chronologically from the tenth century to the twentieth, and geographically from the Middle East to the Mediterranean world and on to northern Europe, east and west. In this memorial volume, many of his students pay homage to their late teacher in the only way he would have appreciated: they have produced a collection of essays that show his and their remarkable range of interests and talents. The result is an important collection of original scholarship on a wide range of topics in Jewish Studies.

Be’erot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky

World

The reader is given an intimate memoir of Jewish adolescence and life from a young woman's perspective in an Eastern European shtetl at the end of the nineteenth century. Hinde Bergner, future mother of one of Yiddish literature's greatest poets and grandmother of one of Israel's leading painters, recalls the gradual impact of modernization on a traditional world as she finds herself caught between her thirst for a European education and true love, and the expectations of her traditional family. Written during the late 1930s as a series of episodes mailed to her children, and never completed due to Bergner's murder at the hand of the Nazis, the memoir provides details about her teachers and matchmakers, domestic religion and customs, and the colorful characters that peopled a Jewish world that is no more. Translated from the Yiddish and with a critical introduction by Justin Cammy, it is a lively addition to the library of Jewish women's memoir, and should be of interest to students of Eastern European Jewish culture and women's studies.

On Long Winter Nights…: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870–1900 (Harvard Center for Jewish Studies (Hardcover))

Biographies & Memoirs

Bergner, Hinde

Community & Culture

On Long Winter Nights…: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870–1900 (Harvard Center for Jewish Studies (Paperback))

In the beginning, prayers were straightforward: people turned to God and asked for help. By the closing centuries of the biblical period, however, a change became observable. Prayers now began to include references to Scripture--allusions to biblical stories in which God had answered a prayer, or the evocation of specific biblical passages, or the recycling of biblical phrases in the creation of a new prayer. This process, the "Scripturalization of prayer," grew in intensity and refinement as Judaism moved from the biblical period to early post-biblical times. It is attested throughout the prayers found in the biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and early piyyut, and it continued apace in the liturgical compositions of the Geonic period and still later times. This collection of essays seeks to chart the main lines of the Scripturalization of prayer over this entire period.

Prayers that Cite Scripture: Biblical Quotation in Jewish Prayers from Antiquity through the Middle Ages

Sociology

This volume brings together sixteen of Professor Israel M. Ta-Shma's outstanding studies that were originally written in English, four of which are being published here for the first time. Set in Germany, northern France, Italy, Poland, and Spain, these essays focus on leading rabbinic scholars and their writings, as well as important issues of Jewish intellectual history, such as the nature of halakhah and aggadah, kabbalah and spirituality, childhood and popular religion. The richness of these studies is seen not only in their meticulous and innovative textual scholarship but also in the fascinating insights and unanticipated connections that typify all of Professor Ta-Shma's published work.

Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought (Harvard Center for Jewish Studies (Hardcover))

Ta-Shma, Israel M.

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Books by Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies