. . about Judaism. And no one is more surprised than she is.Hurwitz was the quintessential lapsed Jew—until, at age thirty-six, after a tough breakup, she happened upon an advertisement for an introductory class on Judaism. She attended on a whim, but was blown away by what she found: beautiful rituals, helpful guidance on living an ethical life, conceptions of God beyond the judgy bearded man in the sky—none of which she had learned in Hebrew school or during the two synagogue services she grudgingly attended each year. That class led to a years-long journey during which Hurwitz visited the offices of rabbis, attended Jewish meditation retreats, sat at the Shabbat tables of Orthodox families, and read hundreds of books about Judaism—all in dogged pursuit of answers to her biggest questions. What she found transformed her life, and she wondered: How could there be such a gap between the richness of what Judaism offers and the way so many Jews like her understand and experience it?Sarah Hurwitz is on a mission to close this gap by sharing the profound insights she discovered on everything from Jewish holidays, ethics, and prayer to Jewish conceptions of God, death, and social justice. In this entertaining and accessible book, she shows us why Judaism matters and how its message is more relevant than ever, and she inspires Jews to do the learning, questioning, and debating required to make this religion their own.

    In order to live in the most meaningful and effective way possible, each of us needs to continually assess and adjust the default frames we have developed. In Positivity Bias, we learn that life is essentially good; that positive perception is applicable and accessible to all; that it derives from objective, rational insight, not subjective, wishful imagination, and that positive living is a matter of choice, not circumstance. An inspiring and life-enriching tapestry woven from hundreds of stories, letter, anecdotes, and vignettes - Positivity Bias highlights how the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, considered the most influential rabbi in modern history, taught us to see ourselves, others, and the world around us.

    Readers will refresh their knowledge of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the artistry of Barbra Streisand, the significance of the Oslo Accords, the meaning of words like balaboosta,balagan, bashert, and bageling. Understand all the major and minor holidays. Learn how the Jews invented Hollywood. Remind themselves why they need to read Hannah Arendt, watch Seinfeld, listen to Leonard Cohen. Even discover the secret of happiness (see “Latkes”). Includes hundreds of photos, charts, infographics, and illustrations. It’s a lot.

    From National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reimagines the past, present, and future of Jewish life

    During the last four years of Wiesel’s life, he met frequently with Reich in New York, Chicago and Florida—and spoke with him often on the phone—to discuss the subject that linked them: Reich’s father, Robert Reich, and Wiesel were both liberated from the Buchenwald death camp on April 11, 1945. What had started as an interview assignment from the Chicago Tribune quickly evolved into a friendship and a partnership. Reich and Wiesel believed their colloquy represented a unique exchange between two generations deeply affected by a cataclysmic event. Wiesel said to Reich, “I’ve never done anything like this before,” and after reading the final book, asked him not to change a word. Here Wiesel—at the end of his life—looks back on his ideas and writings on the Holocaust, synthesizing them in his conversations with Reich. The insights on life, ethics, and memory that Wiesel offers and Reich illuminates will not only help the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors understand their painful inheritance, but will benefit everyone, young or old.

    The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring mark on Buber’s inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a “dialogical attentiveness.” Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber’s life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.

    It's 1968 and bipolar disorder has been ravaging her mother and has sent her father, a powerful attorney, into a spiteful tailspin. To escape Gelt makes one perilous choice after another, and these decisions carry her, unprepared and alone, into a world that is sometimes cruel and often dangerous. After returning to Denver she works to understand her parents and her past, and she is surprised to discover her own strengths.Throughout her memoir Gelt reflects upon how risk taking has shaped her relationships with and her attitudes toward men and sex, her daughter, Judaism, and her own eventual diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

    Gad was adopted by a white Jewish family in Chicago. For her parents, it was love at first sight--but they quickly realized the world wasn't ready for a family like theirs.Marra's biological mother was unwed, white, and Jewish, and her biological father was black. While still a child, Marra came to realize that she was "a mixed-race, Jewish unicorn." In black spaces, she was not "black enough" or told that it was OK to be Christian or Muslim, but not Jewish. In Jewish spaces, she was mistaken for the help, asked to leave, or worse. Even in her own extended family, racism bubbled to the surface.Marra's family cut out those relatives who could not tolerate the color of her skin--including her once beloved, glamorous, worldly Great-Aunt Nette. After they had been estranged for fifteen years, Marra discovers that Nette has Alzheimer's, and that only she is in a position to get Nette back to the only family she has left. Instead of revenge, Marra chooses love, and watches as the disease erases her aunt's racism, making space for a relationship that was never possible before.The Color of Love explores the idea of yerusha, which means inheritance in Yiddish. At turns heart-wrenching and heartwarming, this is a story about what you inherit from your family--identity, disease, melanin, hate, and most powerful of all, love. With honesty, insight, and warmth, Marra B. Gad has written an inspirational, moving chronicle proving that when all else is stripped away, love is where we return, and love is always our greatest inheritance.

    That visit is the start of a tumultuous journey, in which she first learns about a profoundly disabled sister who lives in a residential community in the Galilee and later begins to unearth disturbing long-held family secrets. The process of facing this history and acknowledging the ways she’s been shaped by it will enable Roxanne to forge the kinds of meaningful connections that had for so long been elusive. In this way, The Face Tells the Secret is the story about a woman who finds love and learns how to open herself to its pleasures. The Face Tells the Secret is also a story that explores disability from many angles and raises questions about our responsibility to care for our kin. How far should Roxanne go to care for the wounded people in her life—her mother, her sister, the man who professes undying love? What should she take on? When is it necessary to turn away from someone’s suffering?

    As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotic shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism.Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary ontological insecurities--insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotic concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

    Roosevelt administration’s fateful policies during the Holocaust. Rafael Medoff delves into difficult truths: With FDR’s consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles away—actions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war. What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president’s private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt’s statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration’s policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans.The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR’s personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry’s foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR’s policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration’s realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.

    . . . The appro­pri­ate gift for any occa­sion.”—Jewish Book Council  “[A] love letter—to food, family, faith and identity, and the deliciously tangled way they come together.” —NPR’s The SaltWith contributions from Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Maira Kalman, Melissa Clark, and many more!Tablet’s list of the 100 most Jewish foods is not about the most popular Jewish foods, or the tastiest, or even the most enduring. It’s a list of the most significant foods culturally and historically to the Jewish people, explored deeply with essays, recipes, stories, and context. Some of the dishes are no longer cooked at home, and some are not even dishes in the traditional sense (store-bought cereal and Stella D’oro cookies, for example). The entire list is up for debate, which is what makes this book so much fun. Many of the foods are delicious (such as babka and shakshuka). Others make us wonder how they’ve survived as long as they have (such as unhatched chicken eggs and jellied calves’ feet). As expected, many Jewish (and now universal) favorites like matzo balls, pickles, cheesecake, blintzes, and chopped liver make the list. The recipes are global and represent all contingencies of the Jewish experience. Contributors include Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Gail Simmons, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Maira Kalman, Action Bronson, Daphne Merkin, Shalom Auslander, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Phil Rosenthal, among many others. Presented in a gifty package, The 100 Most Jewish Foods is the perfect book to dip into, quote from, cook from, and launch a spirited debate.

    As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.In Family Papers, the prizewinning Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family's correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. They wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers.With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys' letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.

    Three things make her happy: singing, reading books, and going to Temple. Ridicule makes her afraid to open her mouth, even though she really can sing. But she persists, and with her awkwardness, anxiety, and fear in tow, her love of singing propels her to become the first ordained woman cantor in 3,000 years of Jewish history. Overcoming her own crises and the challenges of finding her way in a male profession, Barbara Ostfeld shows us that we are all brave pioneers at becoming our true selves.

    It then goes on to reveal how Jesus magnificently fulfilled every word in the Bible. Readers will discover why the Lion of Judah is the rightful Lord and King of all people—Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, and the rest of creation.  This book will help Christians understand the history of Christianity and Judaism, get into greater alignment with God’s plan of redemption, be better equipped to share the gospel with Jewish people, and become more sensitive to and appreciative of their Hebraic heritage.

    For this reason I have set this down for you here in brief, so that you might know what kind of people you come from.” These words from the memoirs Glikl bas Leib wrote in Yiddish between 1691 and 1719 shed light on the life of a devout and worldly woman. Writing initially to seek solace in the long nights of her widowhood, Glikl continued to record the joys and tribulations of her family and community in an account unique for its impressive literary talents and strong invocation of self. Through intensely personal recollections, Glikl weaves stories and traditional tales that express her thoughts and beliefs. While influenced by popular Yiddish moral literature, Glikl’s frequent use of first person and the significance she assigns her own life experience set the work apart. Informed by fidelity to the original Yiddish text, this authoritative new translation is fully annotated to explicate Glikl’s life and times, offering readers a rich context for appreciating this classic work.

    In II Kings: In a Whirlwind, Bible educator Alex Israel brings the personalities, events, and messages of the Second Book of Kings to life. The reader will encounter Elisha, the extraordinary prophet and miracle maker, the bloody mutiny of Jehu, the terrible fall of Samaria and the exile of the Ten Tribes, the nail-biting tension faced by King Hezekiah as he withstands the great Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, the devastating idolatry of Manasseh, and the religious revolution of King Josiah. Using traditional and modern commentary, literary analysis, archaeology, and Near-Eastern history, this insightful volume leads the reader through the complex lines of the biblical narrative in an enthralling and readable commentary.

    Drawing on both second temple and early Rabbinic sources, Matthew Colvin places Jesus' words in the Upper Room within the context of historically attested Jewish thought about Passover. The result is a new perspective on the Eucharist: a credible first-century Jewish way of thinking about the Last Supper and Lord's Supper-- and a sacramentology that is also at work in the letters of the apostle Paul. Such a perspective gives us the historical standpoint to correct Christian assumptions, past and present, about how the Eucharist works and how we ought to celebrate it.

    

    By fusing extraordinary findings by modern scholars on the ancient Near East with the original Hebrew text and a brand new English translation by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel clarifies and explains the Biblical narrative, laws, events and prophecies in context with the milieu in which it took place. The inaugural work in this multi-volume series is dedicated to the book of Shemot (Exodus). It features stunning visuals of ancient civilizations including artifacts, archeological excavations, inscriptions and maps, along with brief articles on Egyptology, geography, biblical botany, language, geography, and more. By showcasing material that was unknown to previous generations of Torah scholars, The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel opens a new view into the revolutionary impact of the Tanakh, published for the first time in English.

    Nevertheless, the letter vividly depicts how God's will revealed in Christ reorients believers' lives toward unity, mutual respect, submission, and love--in short, new life in Christ, relying on his power and strength. In this Tyndale Commentary, Darrell Bock shows how this precious jewel of a letter combines gospel doctrine, enablement, and exhortation to life. The Tyndale Commentaries are designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text says and what it means. The Introduction to each book gives a concise but thorough treatment of its authorship, date, original setting, and purpose. Following a structural Analysis, the Commentary takes the book section by section, drawing out its main themes, and also comments on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Additional Notes provide fuller discussion of particular difficulties. In the new New Testament volumes, the commentary on each section of the text is structured under three headings: Context, Comment, and Theology. The goal is to explain the true meaning of the Bible and make its message plain.

    It traces God's pledge of a Savior through Abraham's line down to his great-grandson Judah. It serves as a foundation for the New Testament and its teaching that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise to save humankind from sin and death. In this Tyndale Commentary, Andrew Steinmann offers a thorough exegetical commentary on Genesis, including a reconstructed timeline of events from Abraham's life through to the death of Joseph.The Tyndale Commentaries are designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text says and what it means. The Introduction to each book gives a concise but thorough treatment of its authorship, date, original setting, and purpose. Following a structural Analysis, the Commentary takes the book section by section, drawing out its main themes, and also comments on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Additional Notes provide fuller discussion of particular difficulties. In the new Old Testament volumes, the commentary on each section of the text is structured under three headings: Context, Comment, and Meaning. The goal is to explain the true meaning of the Bible and make its message plain.

    The American poet and critic Adam Kirsch has named it one of the most crucial Jewish books of modern times. Here is the first complete and annotated English edition of this enduring and lively work.Born into a down-on-its-luck provincial Jewish family in 1753, Maimon quickly distinguished himself as a prodigy in learning. Even as a young child, he chafed at the constraints of his Talmudic education and rabbinical training. He recounts how he sought stimulation in the Hasidic community and among students of the Kabbalah--and offers rare and often wickedly funny accounts of both. After a series of picaresque misadventures, Maimon reached Berlin, where he became part of the city's famed Jewish Enlightenment and achieved the philosophical education he so desperately wanted, winning acclaim for being the sharpest of Kant's critics, as Kant himself described him.This new edition restores text cut from the abridged 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, which has long been the only available English edition. Paul Reitter's translation is brilliantly sensitive to the subtleties of Maimon's prose while providing a fluid rendering that contemporary readers will enjoy, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher that give invaluable insights into Maimon and his extraordinary life. The book also features an afterword by Gideon Freudenthal that provides an authoritative overview of Maimon's contribution to modern philosophy.

    She joins her cantankerous family on the long, hot drive to her grandmother’s home in the Catskill Mountains among the city’s Jews who flock to countless hotels and bungalow colonies in the heyday of the Borscht Belt. In the idyllic mountains, Amanda becomes ensconced in the tumult of her extended family and their friends, often seeking solace in the woods with her beloved cousin Laura.Through the following summers, interspersed with the heightened drama of her emotionally charged city life, Amanda faces severe tests to her survival mechanisms, including the pain of loss, abuse, and betrayal, while family secrets threaten to disrupt her life even further. A novel-in-stories, Floating in the Neversink is a testament to the power of survival, friendship, and love.

    At a time when norms of civility are being routinely overwhelmed, it may be the only measure that matters. Mensch-Marks represents Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's personal Torah scroll—the sacred text of his experiences, the life lessons he has learned along his winding, circuitous journey. Mirroring 42 steps Israel wandered in the Wilderness, Hammerman offers 42 brief essays, several of which first appeared in The New York Times Magazine,  organized into categories of character, or "mensch-marks," each one a stepping stone toward spiritual maturation. These essays span most of Rabbi Hammerman's life, revealing how he has striven to be a "mensch," a human of character, through every challenge.Mensch-Marks creates a brand-new genre. It is memoir as sacred story, as how-to book; a series of personal vignettes in dialogue with one another over the span of decades, resonating with eternal ideas that span centuries. It traces the author's own personal growth while providing a road map for people of all backgrounds seeking a life of moral vision. The wisdom is shared not from a pulpit on high, but rather from an unfolding story of a fellow traveler, one who has stumbled, failed, and persevered, struggling with the questions large and small. Through it all, Rabbi Hammerman has tried to live with dignity and grace, what he calls the "nobility of normalcy."He writes, "If by sharing what I've learned, I can add a modicum of generosity, honesty and human connection in a world overflowing with cruelty, loneliness and deceit, then I'll have done my job." The essays cover crucial moments of failure and forgiveness, loving and letting go, finding deeper meaning in one's work, and holiness in the seemingly inconsequential moments of everyday life.  Rabbi Hammerman, ever the optimist, believes that we can turn things around, one mensch at a time.

    In fact, one cannot understand the American political tradition without understanding America's relationship with the Five Books of Moses. This sourcebook assembles the primary sources of American public history and allows the reader to hear the Hebraic echoes that have formed the cultural vocabulary of the Puritan settlers, revolutionaries, African slaves, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, and the broader population.

    

    The hundreds of clothing companies that were established here manufactured modern clothing and developed new designs that were sold throughout Germany and the world. This industry reached the height of its success in the 1920s. Freed from their corsets, sophisticated women of the time dressed in the "Berlin chic" sold by Valentin Manheimer, Herrmann Gerson, or the Wertheim department stores. After 1933, however, most Jewish clothing industrialists were confronted with hatred and violence. Many of their companies were "Aryanized" while they themselves were robbed, displaced, and murdered. Under new Aryan management, these companies created conservative clothing that represented an entirely different image of women.

    Like his monumental translation and commentary of the entire Talmud, the new Steinsaltz Humash includes a treasure trove of information to make the text clear, fascinating, and relevant to users of all backgrounds. Here, Rabbi Steinsaltz’s commentary seeks to connect the reader directly to the peshat, the plain reading of the text. He includes references to many commentaries, while he aims to remove any ‘barriers’ to the text, connecting us directly to the ‘voice of the Torah’. This brand-new volume features several innovative elements including: Hebrew verses in clear Koren font, with vowels and punctuation Accessible English translation that reflects Rabbi Steinsaltz’s understanding of the text Parshiyot divided thematically with introductory explanations Color photos that identify biblical objects and illustrate complicated concepts Notes and photos of modern archaeological and scientific findings Maps, illustrations, and charts to clarify locations and concepts Supplemental background materials, cross-references to the Torah

    The book offers understanding into points of contact between the two religions of Hinduism and Judaism. Providing an important comparative account, the work illuminates key ideas and practices within the traditions, surfacing commonalities between the jnana and Torah study, karmakanda and Jewish ritual, and between the different Hindu philosophic schools and Jewish thought and mysticism, along with meditation and the life of prayer and Kabbalah and creating dialogue around ritual, mediation, worship, and dietary restrictions. The goal of the book is not only to unfold the content of these faith traditions but also to create a religious encounter marked by mutual and reciprocal understanding and openness.

    In the fifth century BCE there was a Jewish community on Elephantine Island. Why they spoke Aramaic, venerated Aramean gods besides Yaho, and identified as Arameans is a mystery, but a previously little explored papyrus from Egypt sheds new light on their history. The papyrus shows that the ancestors of the Elephantine Jews came originally from Samaria. Due to political circumstances, they left Israel and lived for a century in an Aramean environment. Around 600 BCE, they moved to Egypt. These migrants to Egypt did not claim a Jewish identity when they arrived, but after the destruction of their temple on the island they chose to deploy their Jewish identity to raise sympathy for their cause. Their story—a typical diaspora tale—is not about remaining Jews in the diaspora, but rather about becoming Jews through the diaspora.

    Shanah Tovah, everybodeeee! Help Grover get ready to welcome the Jewish New Year.

    Sherwin, once noted that many Jews seemed convinced that since traditional Judaism is focused on Halachah, i.e., the practical observance of the commandments, any discussion about theology is superfluous. Some go as far as to say that traditional Judaism does not have a theology. The problem, of course, is that any discussion about God, the Torah, and the people of Israel immediately raises fundamental questions such as which God are we discussing, how was the Torah revealed, who are the people of Israel, etc. All these questions are the domain of theology, the study of religious beliefs. Perhaps part of the issue with the aforementioned assumptions is the lack of creeds or doctrinal statements along the lines of those embraced by Christiani-ty. Jewish theology is multifaceted and does not reflect the systematic nature of Christian thought. This fact does not diminish its depth, however. At first glance, the topics included in this volume may appear to be a series of disjointed and independent essays. These topics, in my opinion, cover recurring themes and questions that define much of Jewish theology. Any attempt to address Jewish theology comprehensively would require many volumes. This work is focused on a few key concepts only. It is intended for the beginner but hopefully contains sufficient information to also be of interest to the more advanced reader and prove the starting point towards greater study. Chapter one titled Creation, explores the differences between Mesopotamian worldviews and the Bible’s notion of God’s creation of the world. Judaism and in its earlier form, Israelite religion, did not arise in a vacuum. Similarities exist in the foundational stories of various neighboring cultures, but the differences found in the Torah reveal the heart of Jewish faith. The second chapter is titled Jewish Concepts Concerning God and briefly discusses ideas of God in biblical, rabbinic, and Kabbalistic thought. There are conflicting images of God in the Bible, and the developments in Jewish thought sought to address these differences. The third chapter is titled Who is a Jew? It addresses the age-old question of Jewish identity from the vantage point of classical rabbinic perspectives as well as from alternate points of view found in modern Jewish movements. The strengths and weaknesses of these different views are briefly discussed. The fourth chapter, Jewish Views of Afterlife, discusses the fascinating topic of life after death in biblical literature as well as in the later works written during the Second Temple Era, the rabbinic period, and into the medieval and modern periods. Chapter five titled Polarity in Jewish Thought delves into the subject of the Jewish alternative of descriptional theology to theological systems characterized by an emphasis on definition and classification. The next chapter, titled The Revelation at the Torah discusses the giving of the Torah at Sinai and covers the idea of the Torah as it is understood in traditional and non-traditional Jewish movements. A brief discus-sion on historical criticism is also included. In addition, the limits of prophetic revelation in the legislative pro-cess are also discussed. The subsequent chapter, The Land of Israel, surveys biblical and rabbinic perspectives on God’s unique relationship to the Land of Israel. The last chapter titled Tikkun Olam address misconceptions regarding this prevalent but largely misunderstood idea. Tikkun Olam is often understood as a Jewish commitment to social justice. Its original meaning and the very different goals it envisions are deliberated.

    By turns comic, satiric, and earnest, Nomberg's stories take the pulse of Warsaw's Jewish society at the dawn of the twentieth century.